LESLIE: Pete in Wisconsin is on the line with a garage-door problem. What’s going on at your money pit?
PETE: Well, I’m a mostly do-it-yourselfer but I do call the professionals and have them come in when needed. I installed a steel, insulated garage door about three years ago, maybe four now. And worked just fine until just recently. It sounds like it’s binding when I – when it’s still going in the up position. And I ran it like 50 times trying to find where it’s binding. I’m not seeing any place where it’s rubbing on the track or anything else but it sure is making a noise like it is. And as I watch it, it appears as if one side may be going up slightly higher than the other. Any ideas, guys?
TOM: Pete, can you disconnect the garage-door opener from the door itself?
PETE: I can and I have.
TOM: OK. And once the garage-door opener is disconnected, can you open and close the garage door smoothly and evenly with no binding whatsoever?
PETE: There is less binding but there is still some. You can tell that there’s still a load on one side at times, it feels like.
TOM: So it sounds to me like maybe the roller bearings are shot on some part of the door. Because there’s those roller bearings that fit inside the track and they help move the door up and down. And if something is stuck – if one of those bearings is not turning, it’s going to jam on that one side and they’ll sort of fight itself and it’ll try to come up crooked. And that might be what’s causing this.
I would disconnect the garage-door opener from the scenario and work on getting the door to operate nice and smoothly.
PETE: OK.
TOM: If it’s binding – if you feel like it’s binding or uneven without the garage-door opener attached to it, then that’s the heart of the problem right there.
PETE: OK. Do you think that would solve the appearance that one side is being raised? I imagine it would.
TOM: You mean raised more than the other side? One side comes up first?
PETE: Yeah.
TOM: Yeah. Because if the side that’s staying down is binding, then there’s a drag on that, so it’s going to try to pull the door up crookedly.
PETE: Wonderful. Well, I think you may have fixed my problem. I’m going to go check those rollers and make certain that those are all good. And if I need to replace any of those, those are relatively inexpensive. So the money pit isn’t so bad tonight, it looks like.
TOM: Alright, Pete. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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