Why Garage Doors Come Off Track

If your garage door happens to come off its track the risk of serious injury greatly increases.  It is important to take the necessary steps to prevent any harm to you and your family.  The garage door is most likely the largest moving door in your home and can be extremely dangerous if it comes off its tracks.  Below are a few reasons why your garage door may come off its rails. 

Your Car:

The most common cause of a garage door coming off its tracks is due to the homeowners hitting their garage doors with their cars.  When a garage door is hit by a vehicle most often it’s the 2 lower sections that suffer the damage but also the whole door system.  The garage door itself can be extremely heavy starting at about 130 pounds for single doors and larger doors can weigh over 350 pounds.  The first and safest thing for you to do if this happens to you is to get out of your car and get out of the garage.  Do not try to repair it yourself.  Call your local garage door specialist to come out and repair the damaged door.

Tracks aren’t aligned properly or tracks are bent:

Garage doors can bend because of general wear and tear.  One common reason is due to the horizontal tracks not being made from steel strong enough to support the door, a slight impact to the door can cause the tracks to bend resulting in the door falling.  Also, improperly aligned tracks occur when the vertical tracks are not aligned parallel with the horizontal tracks.  The more the garage door is used, the bracket bolts come to lose which allows the tracks to bend.  Since the tracks are no longer properly aligned the leading rollers pop off the tracks.    

Rollers Wear out:

Rollers can break from extreme wear or lower quality.  It only takes one or two garage door rollers to break resulting in additional stress to be placed on the remaining rollers.  This can cause the other rollers to break or come off the tracks.  The extra weight put on the other rollers can cause the horizontal rails to bend.

Broken Lift Cables:

There are normally 2 lift cables, one on either side of the door.  If the garage door becomes out of line, the cables will not wind correctly which can lead to unraveling.  When this occurs the weight of the door is transferred to one side, resulting in rollers either breaking or coming off tracks.

Request your repair services today.  Call us at A1 Affordable Garage Doors for any questions concerning your garage door. 

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