How to Repair a Garage Door – Full Guide

 

A garage door generally has got two main components which are; the door itself and its opener. In this guide, we are going to discuss how to make repairs to both the door and its opener. Let’s begin with how to repair a garage door:

Repairing a garage door

All overhead garage doors, regardless of whether they roll up in sections or just swing up in one piece always operate in spring tension. The door works by moving on metal racks fastened on the garage walls but being pushed by high-tension springs.

When these kinds of garage doors fail to work easily, repairs are generally simple to do. Here are some simple and helpful repair tips for your garage door:

• Steps 1 – First, you are supposed to check the metal tracks that are inside the garage. Check on the mounting brackets that hold the tracks to the walls. If you notice the screws or nuts are loose, you should tighten the screws or bolts. As you repair the garage door, it is best to keep it closed and work from the inside of the garage and examine the tracks for dents, flat spots, and crimps. If you notice any sign damaged spot, you can pound them lightly with a rubber mallet or even a hammer using a block of wood. Severely damaged tracks ought to be replaced altogether.
• Steps 2 – To ascertain the proper alignment of the garage door’s track, you can use a spirit level. The horizontal track of your garage door should slant a little bit down toward the back part of the garage. If you notice that the tracks are not properly aligned, you should loosen the screws or bolts that hold the mounting brackets and then return the tracks into position. You can then recheck the level of the tracks with a spirit level just to ensure that they are back in the right position. Finish the work by tightening the screws or bolts on the mounting brackets.
• Steps 3 – The other thing you will do is to clean the tracks to remove any dirt that may be present there. Ensure that the rollers are thoroughly cleaned and finish off by wiping both the tracks and rollers dry.
• Steps 4 – in this step, you will check for any loose hardware and then tighten as required. For the swing-up doors, you are to check the plates where the spring is mounted to ensure that screws are tight if there are any loose screws tighten them accordingly. For the roll-up doors, you have to check the hinges that hold the sections of the door together. Here also tighten any loose screws and have damaged hinges replaced. Doors that sag at one side can be repaired by having the hinges replaced. There are times the screw hole may have become large, and you can replace the screw with a larger one for a firm fit. You can also use a hollow fiber plug that’s dipped in the carpenter’s glue. For that is cracked at a hinge, you will have to remove the hinge and fill the crack as well as the screw holes with wood filler. After the filler has dried, you can then re-attach the hinge on a different location on the door.

Caution

If your garage roll-up door only has got one torsion spring that’s located at the center of the door, don’t try to repair it by yourself. These kinds of doors usually have very high tension that could cause the spring to injure you. Always call in an expert garage door technician to help you repair this type of door.

Repairing the garage door opener

Sometimes the problem could be the opener and not the garage door and in this, let’s see how you can replace a garage door opener.

A garage door opener typically has a reversible motor that powers the carriage along the rail that is above the door. A drawbar is attached to the carriage that helps to move the door between its opened and closed positions. There’s a travel-limiting device that is designed to stop the door’s motion perfectly at the fully opened and fully closed positions. A relay reversing switch helps reverse the direction of the door’s drive from opening to closing back and forth. You will find most modern garage door openers having a radio receiver that opens the door by receiving signals emitted from an electric module in your car.

Here is a guide to repairing a garage door opener:

Repairing the opener when it can’t be operated by the remote nor the wall switch

There are times when the garage door won’t open when you try opening it by a remote or the wall switch. The most common issue here is most likely that the power source for the garage door opener has been interrupted. You should do the following things:

• The most common cause of this issue is when the motor unit has been unplugged. So here you’d begin by checking the power outlet where the door opener is plugged into a power source. Ensure that it is correctly plugged in.
• It may also be possible that the circuit breaker or the fuse that powers the door opener circuit has either tripped or burned out. When this occurs, the other signs would be other lights and electrical circuits within the garage won’t be working. For this, you will need to reset the breaker or the GFCI or replace the blown-out fuse.
• There is also the possibility of the garage door opener’s motor having burned-out. If this occurs, you will need to call in a qualified technician to have it replaced.

Ben, your garage door expert

I’m Ben, a highly qualified and experienced garage doors repairs person and I help homeowners with almost all issues regarding their garage doors. You can rely on me to help you with every garage door problems such as garage door not opening completely, garage door reversing immediately after touching the floor, garage door failing to open during the winter, etc.