You know that moment when you’re running late for work, you hit the garage door button, and… nothing happens? Or worse, it starts making this god-awful grinding noise that makes you wonder if something’s about to break off and fly across your garage?
Yeah, been there.
Garage doors are one of those things you don’t really think about until they stop working. And when they do, it’s usually at the worst possible time.
Your car’s trapped inside. You’re already stressed. And now you’ve got this heavy door situation to deal with.
Most homeowners will deal with at least one major garage door issue in their lifetime.
Some of you might be dealing with one right now, which is probably why you’re reading this. The thing is, some problems are easy fixes. Others? Not so much.
Let’s walk through the ten most common garage door headaches you’re likely to run into.
Garage Door Won’t Open or Close
This is the big one. The problem that sends most people scrambling for their phone to call a repair company.
So your door won’t budge. Could be a bunch of reasons.
First thing, check if the opener’s getting power.
Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often it’s just a tripped breaker or unplugged unit. Look at the opener itself, see if there’s any lights on. Nothing? Check your electrical panel.
If power’s not the issue, it might be the photo-eye sensors.
These little guys sit on either side of your garage door near the floor, and they shoot an invisible beam across to each other.
If something blocks that beam, or if they’re dirty or misaligned, your door thinks there’s an obstruction and refuses to close. Safety feature, actually.
You can test this by looking at the sensors, they usually have a small LED light. If it’s blinking or not lit at all, that’s your problem right there.
Sometimes it’s the disconnect switch. Every garage door opener has this emergency release cord, usually red, hanging down.
If that’s been pulled, your door’s disconnected from the motor. Easy fix though.
Or here’s another one, your springs might be broken.
We’ll get into that more in a second, but if a spring snaps, your opener can’t lift the door. It’ll try, make some noise, but the door stays put.
Broken or Worn-Out Garage Door Springs
This is probably the most common serious problem you’ll face.
Garage door springs do all the heavy lifting. Literally.
Your door might weigh 150 to 400 pounds depending on if it’s a single or double door, what material it’s made from, whether it’s insulated.
Those springs counterbalance all that weight so your opener motor doesn’t have to work as hard.
There’s two types. Torsion springs sit on a bar above your door, and extension springs run along the tracks on either side.
Torsion springs are more common these days.
They’re rated for about 10,000 cycles, which is one open and close.
Do the math on how often you use your garage, and that usually works out to seven to ten years.
Sometimes more if you maintain them, sometimes less if you’re opening and closing multiple times a day.
When a spring breaks, you’ll know. There’s usually a loud bang, sounds almost like a gunshot. Scares the hell out of people sometimes.
And once it breaks, your door becomes dead weight. If you’ve got two springs and one breaks, you’re at half capacity.
Your opener motor’s going to struggle, might stall out completely.
If you only had one spring to begin with, forget it. That door’s not moving without serious manpower.
You might see one spring now split into two pieces. Could break anywhere along its length, no real pattern to it.
Do not, and I mean this, do not try to replace these yourself unless you really know what you’re doing. These springs are under massive tension.
People have been seriously hurt trying to DIY this repair. Call a professional.
Garage Door Opener Malfunctions
Your opener’s basically a motor with a trolley system that pulls your door up and down.
When it acts up, could be the motor itself, could be the drive system, could be the circuit board.
Motors burn out eventually. They’re not designed to last forever, and if you’ve been running your opener with a broken spring or some other problem that makes it work harder than it should, you’re shortening its lifespan.
Sometimes it’s the drive mechanism. You’ve got chain drive, belt drive, or screw drive systems. Chains can stretch or come off track.
Belts can wear out and slip. Screw drives can get debris in them and jam up.
The circuit board’s another headache.
Modern openers have electronics that control everything, and these can fail. Power surges, age, moisture, all kinds of things can fry a circuit board.
If your opener’s running but the door’s not moving, check the trolley carriage.
That’s the piece that connects to your door and rides along the rail. The connection point can wear out or break.
Misaligned or Bent Tracks
Your garage door runs on metal tracks on both sides. These need to be perfectly aligned and straight for the door to operate smoothly.
Tracks get bent. Someone backs into them with a car.
Something heavy falls against them. Sometimes they just shift over time from the vibration of the door moving.
You can usually spot a bent track pretty easily. Look at the door when it’s moving.
Does it stick at a certain point? Does it wobble or look like it’s not sitting right in the tracks?
If the tracks are out of alignment, you might see gaps between the rollers and the track. Or the door might make a rubbing sound as it moves.
Minor bends can sometimes be tapped back into place, but you’ve got to be careful.
If you bend it too far the other way, you’ll make it worse. Seriously bent tracks need to be replaced.
Track alignment is something you can check yourself.
Use a level to see if they’re plumb. But adjusting them? That’s tricky. The brackets that hold the tracks are bolted to the wall, and loosening those while the door’s tension system is engaged can be dangerous.
Garage Door Making Loud or Unusual Noises
Oh man, the noises these things can make.
Grinding, squealing, rattling, popping, scraping. Each sound tells you something different.
Squeaking usually means you need lubrication.
The hinges, rollers, and springs need to be lubricated regularly. Most people forget about this.
A little garage door lubricant or even spray lithium grease can quiet things down significantly.
Grinding sounds? That’s often the rollers.
These are the wheels that run along the tracks, and they wear out. Metal rollers are louder than nylon ones. If they’re worn down or if the bearings inside them are shot, you’ll hear it.
Rattling could be loose hardware. Garage doors vibrate a lot, and over time nuts and bolts can loosen.
Walk around and check all the brackets, hinges, and bolts. Tighten what’s loose.
A loud bang when the door opens or closes might be the springs.
Either they’re breaking or they’re loose on the torsion bar.
Scraping sounds mean something’s rubbing that shouldn’t be.
Could be a bent track, could be a roller that’s come partially out of the track, could be a section of the door that’s warped.
Damaged or Frayed Cables
The cables work with your springs to lift and lower the door.
They run from the bottom corners of your door, up through the track system, and over to the drums attached to the torsion bar.
These cables are under serious tension. When a spring breaks, sometimes the cable snaps too because of the sudden release of energy.
Even without a spring breaking, cables fray over time.
Look at them closely, you’ll see they’re made of multiple thin wires twisted together. As they age, individual wires start to break off.
Once you see fraying, that cable needs to be replaced soon.
A broken cable is obvious. The door will hang at an angle, won’t open properly, might come off the tracks on one side.
Here’s the thing about cables, same as springs, these are dangerous to replace.
They’re under tension even when the door’s closed. This is not a DIY job for most people.
While minor tasks such as cleaning sensors or replacing remote batteries can be handled by homeowners, most garage door repairs require specialised tools and expertise.
Garage Door Opens or Closes Unevenly
This one’s frustrating. You hit the button and one side of the door moves faster than the other, so the whole thing’s crooked as it goes up or down.
Usually means your springs are unbalanced. If you have two springs, they might not be wound to the same tension. Or one’s wearing out faster than the other.
Could also be the cables. If one cable’s stretched more than the other, or if one’s damaged, you’ll get uneven movement.
Sometimes it’s the tracks themselves. If one track’s bent or misaligned, that side’s going to move differently.
Uneven movement puts stress on your entire system.
The opener has to work harder. The door can jam. Rollers can pop out of the tracks.
It’s something you want to address pretty quickly before it causes bigger problems.
Balancing a door requires adjusting the spring tension, and that’s back to the whole dangerous-tension situation we talked about earlier.
Remote Control or Keypad Not Working
This one’s usually pretty simple, actually.
Dead batteries. That’s the first thing to check. Most remotes use watch batteries or AA batteries. Keypads typically use AA or 9-volt batteries.
If new batteries don’t fix it, the remote might need to be reprogrammed to the opener.
The instructions for this vary by manufacturer, but it’s usually a matter of pressing a “learn” button on the opener unit and then pressing the button on your remote.
Keypads can have similar issues. Or the buttons wear out from use and weather exposure.
Sometimes the problem’s not the remote but the receiver on the opener itself. The antenna wire might be damaged or disconnected. It’s usually a short wire hanging down from the opener motor.
Interference can be a problem too. LED light bulbs in your opener can cause radio frequency interference. Yeah, weird but true.
Switch to an RF-friendly bulb designed for garage door openers.
Garage Door Reverses Before Closing
You hit the button to close, the door starts down, gets partway, then reverses and goes back up. Annoying as hell.
Nine times out of ten, it’s those photo-eye sensors again.
They detect an obstruction, real or imagined, and send the door back up. Safety feature to prevent crushing something.
Check if the sensors are aligned. They need to be pointing directly at each other.
Sometimes one gets bumped or shifts. You’ll see the LED lights on them, if they’re not both showing solid, there’s your problem.
Clean the sensor lenses. Dirt, spider webs, dust, all of that can block the beam.
If the sensors are fine, check the close-limit setting on your opener.
This tells the motor how far down to move the door before it’s considered closed.
If it’s set wrong, the door might think it’s hitting the ground before it actually does, interprets that as an obstruction, and reverses.
You can adjust the limit settings, usually there’s dials or buttons on the opener motor unit. But you have to be careful, set it wrong and you can cause problems.
Dented, Warped, or Damaged Door Panels
This is more cosmetic but can affect function too.
Dents happen. You back into it, kids throw balls at it, hail storms, whatever.
Small dents in steel doors can sometimes be popped back out or filled.
Aluminum dents easier but is also easier to work with sometimes.
Warped panels are trickier. Wood doors warp from moisture and temperature changes.
This can prevent the door from sealing properly, can cause binding as it moves.
Cracked or broken panels need to be replaced.
Some doors have individual panels that can be swapped out without replacing the entire door. Others, not so much.
Depends on how it’s constructed and whether you can still get matching panels.
Damaged panels aren’t just ugly, they can throw off the weight distribution of your door, which affects how the springs and opener work.
Conclusion
Look, garage doors are complicated systems.
Springs, cables, tracks, rollers, openers, sensors, all of it working together to move a couple hundred pounds of door up and down multiple times a day.
Things break. Wear out. Get out of adjustment.
Some fixes are simple. Change some batteries, clean some sensors, tighten some bolts, add some lubricant. You can handle that stuff.
But the big repairs? Springs, cables, major opener problems, track replacement? Those really need a professional.
The tools required, the knowledge of how the tension systems work, the safety considerations, it’s just not worth the risk of doing it yourself unless you really know what you’re doing.
Keep an eye on your door. Listen to how it sounds.
Watch how it moves. Catch small problems before they become big ones, and you’ll save yourself money and headaches down the road.
