Mighty Mule Gate opener slave stuck open

[mred2]

I have a dual gate, I think it is a 402. I have had this happen to me. It has been the solar charger having a bad connection. They have very small wire. I also had a bad battery once. I do use two batteries. On this unit, there is a delay on the slave gate opening. The slave gate also closes a couple of seconds ahead of the master gate. There is a switch that controls this in the control box. This is for use, if you have an electric lock on the middle of the gate. With two gates and it set to have a lock the master gate must open first. As it opens, it drains the power and the slave gate then has to start with less power. For winter weeks and no sun, I have had to take the batteries to the house and charge them. Has always worked so far.
And we know the cold is hard on batteries.

 

[TnAndy]

I had a MM dual gate opener and gave up on it after inventing a few cuss works for it.
It would work when it wanted to. I had to keep the pins free so I could open it manually.
A friend has had 2 singles fail too.
But if I had to guess, there might be a setting for walk in that is delaying one side.

My first set of gate opener were the linear actuator type made by Genie (thankfully no longer on the market). Like you said, royal pain in the backside. The circuit boards were forever going out, even though units were grounded and power run thru a surge protector. I got to know the parts lady at the 800 number on a first name basis.

I finally trashed them and replaced with a swing arm type opener that has ZERO electronic components....every thing in it except the radio receiver board ( and I use a cheap universal Genie unit for that) is mechanical switches....no 'black chips' and such to burn out. Been on there 20 years now, and all the maintenance consists of belt change (1/2hp motor on master/slave units goes a gear reduction right angle drive) once every 10 years, and once one of the double throw switches that does the reversing went bad. UNFORTUNATELY, they discontinued this model, to build one with a auto close loop, electronic eyes like garage doors and such, which meant circuit boards again.

I'll keep this thing running forever, every piece in it can be sourced from other parts suppliers. It actually doesn't look that hard to reverse engineer it and build one. Fairly simple, easy laid out wiring and mechanical parts.

Both units were about $1700 twenty plus years ago, which was a punch in the wallet, but honestly, it's one of the few things I can say will probably out last me.

 

[acraiger]

Just wanted to thank everyone for their suggestions.

The wire that came with the MM was not long enough, so I had to add wire when I installed it going to both the main and slave arms. I think I had used the wrong gauge, it was going from 16 gauge to 22 gauge.
So I switched the wire I had added with 16 guage wire, I just did the wire going to slave which goes under the driveway inside a 1/2 inch pvc pipe. So far it has been opening every time. I'm not 100% sure it is fixed, as it is now summer, and have not had any cold days to test it. The manual did say to use 16 gauge.

Before the alarm was going off almost constantly every time I opened it, the 2 beep alarm until I reset it. Then the slave would not close until I waited a few hours.