Free on-site gate assessment - hinges, posts, and your LiftMaster or Nice gate operator checked before anything is quoted
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AfterGate Repair Before & After in Sunnyvale, CA
We’ve repaired and installed over 22,000 gates since 2014, and every job leaves a documented photo record. This gallery shows what we actually found on real Sunnyvale properties, what we did about it, and how the gate performed when we finished. No stock photos, no staging - just the work.
Recent Transformations
Sagging Wrought-Iron Driveway Gate - Lakewood Neighborhood
The gate had dropped two inches on the latch side and was scraping the concrete every time it closed. We found the bottom hinge pin worn to a flat spot and the masonry post footing cracked from years of Santa Clara Valley soil movement. We pulled the gate, sleeved the hinge with a commercial-grade bronze bushing, and re-poured the post base with a wider footing. Gate clears the driveway by a full inch now, and the photo log shows the new pin diameter and the footing dimensions before we left.
FAAC Swing-Gate Operator Failure - Ponderosa Area
The FAAC 415 operator would run for three seconds and stop, leaving the gate half-open. We traced it to a water-damaged control board - the conduit seal had failed sometime after the last rainy season, and corrosion had climbed two inches up the board edge. Rather than replace the whole unit, we sourced the correct FAAC control board, replaced the arm bracket where the pin had wallowed out, and re-routed the conduit with a drip loop. Under Clause 1, we wrote the repair price before touching anything: $680 for board, bracket, and two hours labor. The 365-Day Done Right Promise covers the board and our wiring.
Dual-Slide Gate Track Misalignment - Serra Mesa
Both gates in a dual-slide system were binding at the same point, which usually means the track, not the operators. We found a twelve-foot section of V-groove rail where a landscaping truck had apparently backed into it - the rail had a three-quarter-inch vertical bow and the concrete footing underneath had spalled. We cut out the damaged rail, poured new concrete with embedded J-bolts, and set a replacement rail laser-leveled to the existing good sections. The operators now draw four amps under load instead of eleven. Adrian Vance noted in the job record that the original rail was mild steel; we spec’d galvanized replacement for the coastal moisture that drifts in from the Bay.
LiftMaster LA500 Post Install - Cherry Chase
Homeowner had been manually dragging a fourteen-foot wooden swing gate for six years. We measured the gate weight at 340 pounds and the post embedment at eighteen inches - adequate for the LA500’s torque but not for the old arm that had been cobbled on years ago. We installed the LiftMaster LA500 with a articulated arm (clearance was tight to the fence line), added a monitored photo-eye across the driveway, and wired a second reverse loop at the property line. The written price was $2,840 including the power run from the garage subpanel, which we tested under load before finishing. Every wire termination was photographed, and the homeowner got the wiring diagram we drew on site.
Ghost Controls TSS1XP Troubleshooting - Ortega Park Vicinity
Gate was dead every morning, working fine by noon. Classic battery failure masked as a solar problem. We load-tested the two 12-volt batteries and found one cell shorted, pulling the whole bank down overnight. The solar panel was also mounted flat - fine in June, but in Sunnyvale’s winter sun angle it was only hitting 60% of potential. We replaced both batteries with deep-cycle AGM units, remounted the panel at 37 degrees (local latitude), and added a low-voltage disconnect to prevent future deep discharge. Total was $420. The photo record shows the old battery load-test printout and the new panel angle measured with a digital level.
Commercial Pedestrian Gate Weld Repair - Downtown Sunnyvale
Five-foot steel pedestrian gate at a light commercial property had a crack running six inches up from the bottom rail, right at the hinge-side stile. Someone had already tried to weld it once, but they used flux-core wire on dirty metal and the crack propagated past the repair. We cut out the bad section, beveled the joint, and welded in a 3/16-inch gusset plate on the back side for reinforcement. Then we ground the face flush and touched it with cold galvanizing compound. The gate was sagging because the crack let the stile flex; after repair, the gate hung plumb without adjusting the hinges. We wrote $380 before striking the first arc, and the photo log shows the crack progression, the gusset fit-up, and the finished weld profile.
What Every Job Has in Common
These six jobs involved four different automation brands, two welding repairs, and one full installation. The process never changes. We find the actual failure. We write the price before any work starts. We photograph what we found and what we fixed. You get the photo log and the written record when we leave. If anything isn’t right within a year, we make it right under the 365-Day Done Right Promise - no argument, no fee.
Adrian Vance started this habit in 2014 on commercial access-control sites, and we apply it to every residential gate in Sunnyvale the same way.
Before
AfterWant Results Like These?
Call (669) 900-1904 anytime - a live person answers, even at 2 a.m. Describe what your gate is doing, and we’ll tell you whether it sounds like an operator issue, a mechanical problem, or something else entirely. If you have a written estimate from another company, bring it in for a free second opinion. We’ll review the scope and the pricing at no charge, and if we take the job, the price is written and agreed before any work starts.
Written by Adrian Vance, Owner at Vance Gate Repair Sunnyvale, serving Sunnyvale since 2014.