Taking Care of the Tracks

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Regular Maintenance

The job of the garage door tracks is to guide the unit up and down during opening and closing. This is done with the help of rollers whose stems are attached to the panels. There is one track on each side of the door consisting of a vertical and horizontal section. Since the tracks are not moving components, they don’t require lubrication as part of annual maintenance. However, they do need cleaning. Check for pebbles and bigger accumulations of dirt which you can remove by hand in the first place. Then spray brake cleaner or mild solvent along the length of the components. It will pick up and remove sticky dirt deposited during the movement of the metal rollers.  You should check the bottom sections for rust and clean them with rust remover, if needed.

Misaligned and Bent Track Repair

It is not uncommon for the vertical and horizontal sections of a track to get misaligned. The solution involves loosening the bolts of the brackets and adjusting the sections. Once the bolts are properly tightened, everything will go back to normal. Lost and damaged bolts should be replaced as soon as possible. Regrettably, track bending is becoming an ever more common problem primarily due to the fact that manufacturers make these garage door parts thinner than before. Bending can cause the door to shake or make full closing impossible. A slightly bent track can be fixed with a special straightening technique. If the bending is deep, replacement is the best solution.