Understanding How A Garage Door Can Come Off Its Tracks

3 May 2022
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Due to constant use, a garage door can come off its tracks. The door is more likely to fall off and cause serious injuries if this happens. Therefore, it is important to be keen and look out for signs such as rubbing noises, a slow door, or a change in performance. If you notice any of these, you should call for immediate inspection and repair. You also need to understand the causes for such issues to know enough to hire a garage door repair expert in time. Take a look at some of the causes below:

Imprecise Parking

Some drivers may hit the garage door with their vehicles from time to time. While it may not be intentional, it may have a considerable, destructive effect on the door. The damage grows bigger due to further impact on the door. For example, the door's rollers may come off their tracks, leaving the door hanging on its cables. Because your door weighs hundreds of pounds, it would be dangerous to operate it in this state. It may also be hazardous for a nonprofessional to try to fix it. Hire an expert garage door repair company to remedy the situation.

Bent or Misaligned Tracks

If the tracks aren't top quality or are faulty, they could fail and cause the garage door to fall off track. Typically, the weight of the garage door is handled by the tracks. Given how heavy garage doors are, they require sturdy, high-quality tracks to support the weight. Otherwise, it wouldn't take a large impact to cause the door to become misaligned. 

Additionally, if the vertical tracks are not in line with the horizontal tracks, the reinforcements also become loose, resulting in a bent track. It is dangerous to operate your door in such a state because the rollers might break loose from the tracks. Therefore, it would be best if you treated this as a problem that requires urgent garage door repair.

Broken Cables

This is a more likely problem if your door has not been used for a while. In such a case, the cables may break due to misalignment issues. These cables are usually wrapped around the drum connected to the steel shaft. If the door's alignment gets compromised, the cables may also lose their alignment with the drums and break. As a result, your garage door will lean on one side because of uneven weight distribution. Regular inspections can help to catch this issue in time.

If your garage door shows any signs of misalignment, it probably is off its tracks due to the reasons discussed above. The best remedy is promptly calling for garage door repair services and preventing injury or further damage.