Crooked garage door

[jeff37]

OK, I have an extension spring garage door I've been doing battle with for months now. A couple of months ago, I replaced the springs (one broke) and also replaced a bunch of the worn hinges and rollers.

I also tried to straighten the tracks a bit, because the button on the bottom bracket (that attaches to the pull cable) had always been scraping against the tracks and causing issues. First, I set the tracks at 1/2" away from the door on both sides. The scraping was much worse that way, and sometimes it would cause the door to jam. It seemed to get worse over the course of a few weeks, even after I readjusted the spring tension a few times.

I then pulled the tracks as far apart as possible, to keep the thing from scraping. Now my problem is that the door always becomes crooked when being lowered. By the time it gets near the bottom, it jams and resets. I've toyed with the tension quite a bit, and this doesn't seem to do anything. I think the problem is more with the tracks, but I can't figure out quite what is going on.

Any thoughts on what I need to do to stop this? Also, for the track, should it tilt either towards or away from the garage as it goes down? In my case, the bottom of the vertical track is maybe an inch closer to the inside of the garage than the top. I've seen this is typical based on the couple of other doors I checked, but I'm not sure. I did try straightening it at one point, but it made the button sticking worse (tho unpredictable).

Any help is appreciated. I'm sick of this, and its starting to get cold outside!

[S H O P D O G]

Is it alway "cocking" to the same side?

SD

[jeff37]

Yup. And when I tried adjusting the tension on that side to counter it, it did not seem to help.

[S H O P D O G]

OF course since I'm not there this is all shooting in the dark but, how bout the rollers on that side. Are they all rolling easily? ANy of them hanging up? What about equal and opposite reaction, maybe the other sides tension is off a bit?

I have old wooden doors right now (getting ready to changover to new ones shortly) when the right door c**ks I just give it a "jerk" to the side and it levels out.

What about where the turn is? are the turns level with each other? I think thats where my problems lies, the tracks are a bit loose and when the one side moves is when it "c**ks"?

I hope I'm helping, if I could see it I may be a better help

RIch

[trader4]

Are you sure the new springs are of equal force? You could try switching from one side to the other. Or buy another set. Also you can set one to have more initial tension than the other, but it sounds like you tried that already. But first, I'd set the tracks to somewhere in the mid range. You seem to have gone from very close to the door, to the other extreme. Other than cocking and binding, is the door fairly well balanced through it's range?

I'd also have someone manually work the door while you look closely at the various areas to see if you can see what is going wrong.

[Don Young]

The track should be closer to the jamb at the bottom. The hinges should correspondingly be shorter from the door to the roller axle at the bottom. This makes the door tighten toward the jamb as it goes down but keeps the entire door even with the jamb. You may have some improper or mixed up hinges.

Don Young