I want to replace the rubber/vinyl seal on the lower section of a 16ft steel garage door, it appears that the seal has to slide into a track/grove.
I do think that the door has to be clamped shut, then the lower section bracket loosened so that section, can be slanted to a position that would make it easier to work with the seal.
Has anyone done this and have any tips on how to make this as simple as possible, for a do it yourselfer?
Thanks
Tom
Look at your door. You probably have a track that is in sections.
Open the door partway so the lower section of the track can be unbolted and then you can probably flex the door enough to slip out the old one and slip in the new one.
What you might want to try is when the door is open fully, Close it a few inches. that sholuld give you enough room to slide the old rubber bottom seal out and put the new one in. Also, it would be a good idea to go buy a can of light spray grease and spray the metal track that the bottom seal slides into. It will make things go more smoothly. Also, it would be a good idea to get the help of someone else to feed the bottom seal in while you pull it down the door.
That is FOOLISH DEATH-WISH ADVICE. Follow it at your peril. Sectional doors cannot be safely disassembled by the casual do-it-yourselfer.
Besides, the OP doesn't even specify the bottom seal or an inter-panel seal. It matters.
can be
First off I said nothing about disassembling the door, I suggested it migh tbe possable to remove the lower section of *track* so the gasket could be slipped into a grove at teh bottom of the door.
Doing this the door would be mostly up supported by the track still in place. The only reason I suggested removing the lower section of *track* was to get a little wiggle room to replace the gasket.
I did however assume that the OP was refering to the bottom gasket.
If how ever it was the gasket between the lower panel and the next one up, that would probably be easier to replace. This gasket should be accesable by opening the door untill the lower section is at its highest vertical point and the next section is angled back. I would then strip off the old gasket and clean the top of the lower section or the bottom of the upper section and use an appropriate peal and stick foam seal.
Now please explain to me why you claim my suggestion is a foolish death wish?
I gather it isn't obvious to your mechanical intuition.
A sectional garage door is normally a system containing a balance of two huge forces, the weight of the door versus the lift of the lift cables, drums, and torsion springs. This balance gives the illusion that the door is approximately weightless and that no forces are involved, when in fact hazardous forces are merely being kept at bay, like two giants in a stalemated tug of war. This is a very dangerous illusion when it comes to naive tinkering with the mechanisms. Releasing certain constraints (setscrews, cable brackets, tracks) permits the potential energy of these opposing forces to convert into kinetic energy of large masses in violent motion.
For example, if the track does not constrain the door movement (imagine the track were to just suddenly disappear by magic), in the down position, the door will fold on its hinges. BOOM! The lower panel(s) will be lifted by the lift cables and fly up violently, while the upper panel(s), no longer supported by the lower panels, will fall by gravity, also violently.
It isn't foolish and it isn't unsafe but you need to block the door in position. A better way might be to remove the two lower wheels so that the panel could swing down when the door is up or inward when the panel is vertical.
That would work but block the door up at a convenient height first. Probably only have to remove the lower two wheels.
BUT, look for a replacement seal that fits first. Most of the seals that I see are intended to simply be nailed on as are most of the seals on a wooden door. I haven't seen a garage door seal such as you mentioned so you may have a hard time finding a replacement. It may simply be that the seal just pries out of the metal holder, and the new seal is slipped in a putty knife rather than sliding from the end.
This is just contemptibly wrong, inventing advice that will not merely fail, but will almost certainly hurt anyone stupidly credulous enough to follow it. Good techniques may come from training, experience, scientific analysis, or even armchair intuition, but you exhibit none of these. Let's hope you're just being trollish.
Stupid, reckless, ignorant advice.
Richard,
When the door is mostly up as I had suggested The rollers on the door are still in the track. Your *huge* force is still constrained. By the way, how many pounds of force are exerted when the door is half way up? Seems to me the force on one cable would be slightly less than half the weight of the door in the vertical position. Since these sections are ordinarily assembled by one person the *huge* force might not be so *huge*.
You are speculating about hazardous things you clearly don't understand.
The force is applied *after* assembly.
Stupid reckless, ignorant teenager! Isn't the school holiday over? Have you ever seen a multi section garage door?
I'll admit to that, but it was some three decades ago.
Sure it is but if the force was significantly greater than the weight of the door, you would have a devil of a time closing it.
I believe it was Newton that said for every action there must be an equal but opposite reaction.
From your web site you describe winding the spring. You also show a weight of 350 pounds for the door. So at full down each side of the spring is going to be applying about 175 pounds of force up to equal the weight of the door.
when the door is half way up, that number will be about half as the spring unwinds, and at 3/4 the way up will be about 1/4 of the 175pounds or perhaps a little more because of the preload. For the sake of argument, let's say the force was about 50 pounds.
This is like a 50 pound weight on one side of the pulley trying to lift up one edge of the garage door attached to the other side of the pulley.
Is this what you are calling a *huge* force?
George,
Richard has seen a sectional garage door, he has a picture of one on his web page showing how he single handedly fixed a spring and didn't get killed because he had the foresight to use an 18 inch lever. Most amazing thing was he did this perched on a ladder.
Not bad for a PhD eh?
Yes. In the hands of ignorance like yours, it has killed people.
No, it's very valid advice, especially considering the context of the = question. You've obviously never been centrally involved installing a = door like that or you would realize it.
So lets see, you got a 50 pound force attempting to pull one corner of the door up, and the upper part of the lower section is bolted to the restrained lower part of the second section, and the other side of the lower section is restrained by the track in the roller.
If I understand you, this circumstance is likely to be fatal. I surmise that you suggest the *huge* 50 pound force is going to suddenly twist the lower section of the door, cuff someone like me attempting the repair in the face and send that ignorant schlub flying backwards where he hits his head, impales himself or otherwise permanently runs afoul of the laws of physics.
For several reasons I disagree. First off, let us assume that a door identical to the one pictured on your web page is horizontal fully supported by the rollers in the track except one corner. I think you would have to apply more than 50 pounds of force on that corner to cause a failure of the partially restrained panel.
Secondly, If someone as ignorant as I, were to be unbolting a section of sectional door, I would, in all likelihood , unbolt the bolts one at a time. This would mean that the force attempting to send me to my death would first make itself known long before its full fury would come crashing in to my jaw. This would allow me to call upon all of the innermost desire to avoid pain and death to restrain the edge of the door. I probably would have to do this anyway as the force would jam the interlocking track.
On a side note, when you were plastering your pool, why didn't you rig a chute to pour the plaster down into a waiting receptacle rather than bucketing it?
Running a liquid down a chute is equivalent to throwing it down; very little kinetic energy is lost to any resistance. The chute may guide where it arrives at the bottom, but it still arrives with about the same kinetic energy, which is to say, splattering everywhere.
I'll admit my untried intuition on this was as wrong as yours. I tried it and learned the hard way.
You should be skeptical of your own intuitive analysis of garage doors, because it is also quite wrong. The system contains on the order of 1000s ft-lbs of energy, and your suggestions for disassembly will result in an uncontrolled release of that energy, one way or another, and many of those ways are destructive or injurious. The only proper method for such repairs is to first relax the torsion springs, absorbing the energy safely into your muscles over a period of 30-odd quarter-turns of an 18-inch winding bar.
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