· by Michael Blair, Nashville's Garage Door
The garage door is the largest and heaviest moving part of a house, cycles thousands of times a year, and typically receives no attention until it stops. Twenty minutes twice a year prevents most of what goes wrong.
Lubricate the right things
Hinges, rollers, springs, bearing plates and the lock. Use a garage-door-specific lubricant or a light lithium grease — not WD-40, which is a solvent and displaces the lubricant already there.
Do not lubricate the track. The rollers should roll along it, and grease in the track collects grit and makes things worse.
Tighten and inspect
Vibration loosens hardware over thousands of cycles. Check the bolts on hinges, the track brackets and the opener mounting.
Look at the cables for fraying, particularly near the bottom brackets. A frayed cable is a warning; a broken one under tension is dangerous.
- Lubricate hinges, rollers, springs and bearings twice a year
- Never lubricate the track
- Tighten hinge, bracket and opener bolts
- Inspect cables for fraying at the bottom brackets
- Test the balance and the auto-reverse
Test the two safety functions
Balance: pull the release, lift the door manually, and confirm it stays put at waist height. If it falls or rises, the springs need attention.
Auto-reverse: lay a piece of timber flat on the floor in the door path and close it. The door must reverse on contact. Then break the photo-eye beam while closing and confirm it reverses.
Replace the bottom seal
The rubber seal along the bottom hardens and cracks, letting in water, leaves and rodents. It slides out of a channel and replaces easily and cheaply.
In Middle Tennessee it is also what keeps a driving rain out of the garage, which matters if anything is stored on the floor.