Garage Door Won’t Close Properly

LESLIE: Nancy in Massachusetts is dealing with a garage that’s got other plans than closing. What’s going on there?

NANCY: I have a dilemma about what to do about the door. It’s just not closing properly and sometimes, it doesn’t even want to go up and down, never mind when it comes down it wiggles left to right, left to right until it gets to the bottom.

TOM: This is on a garage-door opener?

NANCY: Oh, oh, yes, yes.

TOM: So when it goes up and down, it shimmies in the opening?

NANCY: Yes. And the closing.

TOM: So, generally, the rollers on the side of the garage door are failing when that occurs. They’re ball-bearing rollers and when they get stuck, then they get sort of hung up on the way down and that’s what makes the door sort of vibrate and puts a lot of resistance on it, too. And that may be the reason your garage door is not closing all the way or closing unevenly.

It sounds like the door is pretty old. And your options are to replace all the hardware and try to, you know, realign the door to get it working right or just replace the door and the garage door opener. If it’s that old and that sort of rickety, I might lean towards just a replacement. The new doors today are actually a lot lighter than the old doors and they work really smoothly.

I just put two on in the garage, I guess, about 8, 9 months ago now and I’m really happy with them. And I used to have really heavy, hardboard doors on this garage and now I have nice, factory-painted steel doors that look really good, really sharp and just close flawlessly every single time.

NANCY: Well, this is one of those metal doors.

TOM: It is? OK. But it’s an older metal door?

NANCY: Yeah. And I put Boeshield on the tracks to try to get it to roll down properly.

TOM: Yeah. But if the hardware has failed – even if you’re lubricating the tracks, if the hardware has failed, it’s not going to work right.

NANCY: So what would you recommend? A new door or just get somebody over to do the hardware?

TOM: I’d get a new garage door and a new opener.

NANCY: Yeah, OK. I don’t want to put good money after bad.

TOM: Exactly. I think – who knows if you can find the old hardware to match and everything? I’d just get a new door and a new opener. I think it’d be worth it.

NANCY: OK. Very good advice. I appreciate it very much.