The moving parts of a garage door should be oiled and greased in order to avoid friction and wear. Your garage door should come greased from the factory, but over time and with exposure to the elements, the oil and grease that protect the door can degrade. Once you lose your protective grease, your hinges can get stuck, and your rollers can stop rotating. When this happens, you need to act quickly to make repairs.
Preventative Maintenance
Your garage door should run silently or nearly so. If your garage door starts making noises, you should take it as a sign that the grease on your door is beginning to wear out. If you catch the noises soon enough, you can fix the problem simply by getting out a can of penetrating oil and spraying the oil into the joints between the panels of your garage door, and into the axles of your rollers. A penetrating oil will be able to work its way into the hidden surfaces in your joints and axles.
When More in Depth Repairs Are Necessary
If you don't catch oil loss soon enough, then friction can destroy joints and axles. You should feel free to replace almost any roller on your garage door. You will know if a roller needs replacing when one side of the wheel is worn to a flat surface.
Simply buy a new roller, remove the screws that hold the rollers in place, remove the roller, put the new roller in place, then replace the screws that hold the roller in place. The one roller you should leave to the professionals is the bottom roller. The bottom roller houses a cable that connects the spring that help your motor to raise the door easier. This cable is under high tension and removing the bolts that hold it in place can cause it to whip around and cause damage or injury.
Rollers are one issue, and the joints between door panels are another. As long as you only remove one hinge at a time, you should have no problem replacing the hinges between the panels in your garage door.
A garage door can work well for many years, especially if you are careful about making sure that your door receives all necessary maintenance. You should realize, however, that repairs are unavoidable.
The day will come when your garage door needs some sort of repair. As long as you know what to look for, you should have no problem working on your garage door on your own. After all, a garage door is really not all that complicated. As long as you avoid monkeying around with the bottom roller where the spring cable connects, you should have nothing to worry about. Visit http://oandldoorsystems.com for more information.
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