Replacing patio door wheels with a lump of PTFE

[Simon]

I've got an old patio door that is very hard to slide backwards and forwards. It runs on 2 pairs of 30mm plastic wheels, running on a steel rail. At least one of the wheels is disintegrating, and it looks like I would have to partially dismantle the door in order to remove the wheel bogie.

Rather than hunting around for a compatible replacement bogie and then taking the door apart to fit it, I was thinking of buying a nice big block of PTFE from RS, and fixing a bit of it to the bottom of the door, with a channel cut in it to keep it on the rail.

Has anybody tried this? Would this have low-enough friction? Would bits of grit get stuck in the PTFE and then abrade the steel rail?Presumably there's a reason that patio doors use wheels rather than blocks of PTFE?

Thanks.

[John]

I think grit would be the problem. Grit is also often the cause of the wheels failing as well. A sharp piece can shatter a wheel - or stop it turning so that it then slides and gets a flat.

[EricP]

I have used PTFE for sliders and it was a waste of time. The stuff scratches easily and when rough, is not very slippy.

What you want is someone who does small lathe work, and get them to make some new wheels for you.

[Roger]

The message from "Simon" contains these words:

I thought about doing something like that at one time but concluded that it would not work well enough. In the end we removed the door and fitted a replacement steel wheel (the original was aluminium which had stopped rotating and worn flat). Went for a fixed height rather than the extra trouble of mounting the wheel on the adjustment carrier. The replacement was taken from a surplus pulley that had originally been purchased for the clothes line.