The Most Common Causes of Garage Door Noise

Believe it or not, your garage door isn’t supposed to make a commotion every time it opens and closes. You might not even remember the last time your garage door opened smoothly, but we’re here to say that a correctly installed and maintained garage door should have minimal noise and certainly shouldn’t make you wince every time you operate it.

With that said, a noisy garage door isn’t something you have to live with. There are often some simple maintenance tricks or easy repairs that can be done to fix your noise problem. We thought we’d share the most common causes of garage door noise and what you can do about them.

Lubrication Has Worn Away

Mechanical components need lubrication to run smoothly. Just as your car needs oil to run, your garage door needs to be lubricated so its moving parts slide across each other without friction. A garage door without proper lubrication isn’t just noisy; that grinding noise means the metal and plastic parts are grinding away at each other. Eventually, they’ll fail completely.

Garage doors need to be lubricated any time they begin making noise. Lubrication should be infrequent, certainly not as often as an oil change, but doing so will ensure smooth operation and minimal noise.

Bent Or Damaged Tracks

If you’ve ever struggled with a sliding door that has bent tracks, then you understand how irritating the issue can be. Your garage door has wheels or ball bearings that run across tracks—if they aren’t straight, then they will rub against the tracks as they move, or, worse yet, jam completely if the tracks are too bent.

Bent tracks need to be replaced—there’s no easy way to straighten them out again. What causes bent garage door tracks? You might bump your door with the car—while it might not appear like you did any physical damage, you probably bent the tracks.

Loose Or Drooping Chain

Most garage doors have a chain mechanism that lifts and lowers the door as it’s fed through the garage door opener. This chain needs to be taut to operate correctly. If your chain is loose, then it will make all kinds of noise as it struggled to be fed through the opener channel. If you’ve ever had a loose timing belt, then you understand how noisy a chain or belt can be if the tension isn’t correct. If this is the case, then a chain replacement is in your future.

Imbalanced Door

Your door needs to hang level and plumb. If not, it will squeal and shutter as it opens and lowers. A garage door can become imbalanced over time—maybe you or a family member nudged it with your car, or your kids hung off it thinking it was the perfect pull-up bar!

Either way, an imbalanced door is loud and will inevitably lead to greater problems down the road. If you fear this is your issue, then we’d love to look at it. We could either fix the door or look at a replacement.

Is your garage door making an awful noise? Reach out to us today for an inspection, repair, and/or replacement.