My garage door had been making a little extra noise and seemed to be moving just a little bit slower lately. I did what anyone would do – I checked the log and found that I had neglected my lubrication duties! So I pulled on a pair of latex gloves, grabbed an old towel for the inevitable mess and went to work. I mopped up the old grease from the tracks – the towel collected the gobs of gritty goop nicely. I shot the rollers and the chain with fresh lithium grease. I ran the mechanism several times, paying attention that I’d gotten the grease into all of the moving parts. It appeared that over the years the chain had stretched some and I wondered briefly when it would fail…

And suddenly it stopped, mid-cycle! What’s more, I think I saw wisps of smoke curling from within the motor power head’s housing. Smelled like… and I would later confirm… eau-de-silicon. More precisely, the motor’s startup capacitor was had fried.
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