1. Visually Inspect Your Garage Door
You may not be an expert on how a garage door works, but anyone can detect the most obvious signs that one isn’t in peak form. Examine each of your garage door’s metal components in any order.
- Springs – A garage door can stop opening or closing correctly once its springs begin to fail. Worn out springs are often noisy, although you can tell a spring is nearing the end of its lifespan by looking at it as well. A spring that has snapped in two is obviously no longer any good, but a spring that is corroded or appears stretched out requires replacement as well.• Rollers – Rollers connect a garage door to its tracks. They make noise when they’re on the verge of failure, but if the little wheels develop sharp edges or become rusted then they are at risk of breaking soon.
- Cables – When its cables work correctly, a garage door’s weight is evenly distributed across its springs. Cables will soon stop serving their important function when they are frayed, broken, or separating from one another.
- Drums – A garage door’s drums are located on either side of its torsion tube, which is visible just above the garage’s opening while its door is closed. The drums also keep the door’s weight evenly distributed, and they become chipped, warped or broken when they start wearing out.
- Tracks – This feature’s purpose is obvious, and so too are its signs of failure: bending, warping and corrosion.
- Panels – Inspect the interiors and exteriors of your garage door’s panels. Any areas that are rusting will only become worse without intervention.
Please take care: Replacing garage door springs without proper training and equipment is highly dangerous!
2. Tighten Hardware
A garage door’s nuts and bolts are made of metal. They expand and contract when they heat and cool, which forces them to gradually loosen. Loose hardware can cause a garage door to operate less efficiently or more noisily, but it is an easy problem to solve with only a socket wrench. Just tighten every fastener in your garage door and its tracks that you can reach!
3. Replace Weather Stripping
The supple material on the bottom of your garage door is part of its insulation. It creates a tight seal against the garage floor that blocks out water and pests, and also absorbs some shock while the door is closing. Cracked, hardened or fragmented weather stripping is no longer effective, which is why it’s important to install new garage seals before the summer rains arrive.
4. Clean Tracks
The tracks on either side of your garage door constantly accumulate dirt, dust, road grime and other coarse debris that interferes with normal operation of the rollers. Cleaning them is easy: Pick out any larger pieces of detritus you can see, and then give the tracks an enthusiastic scrub with soapy water and a rag. Let the tracks fully dry before proceeding to the next step.
5. Lubricate
No amount of preventative maintenance will prevent a garage door’s metal parts from rusting and wearing out over time, but judicious applications of lubricant will make them last as long as possible. Whichever type of lubricant you choose, apply some to any component of your garage that moves or comes into contact with another component.