A garage door is an important component of your home because, without it, anyone would be able to easily access your garage space. The garage door improves your home’s security and privacy, but there are many moving parts within a garage door that can create issues. Read on to learn why your garage door is making a grinding noise.

Misaligned Tracks

When you have misaligned tracks, the garage door places uneven pressure on the wheels and hinges of the door, leading to jolting motions that can create rattling and grinding noises. Misalignment can occur as a result of poor installation, debris in the track, or parts wearing down and failing over time. You can work on realigning the tracks yourself, but if you don’t fix the issues that created the misalignment in the first place, you are only going to keep encountering this grinding problem. You must take care of this issue early because the longer you use a garage door that’s grinding and bumping, the more you’ll wear out the motor and hurt its lifespan.

Loose Parts

One of the most common reasons you may find your garage door grinding when opening or closing is that there are loose parts, like rollers or hinges. It makes sense that a loose roller or hinge may occur over time when you consider that these parts are lifting a gargantuan garage door multiple times a day, almost every day. After years of use, these parts can become loose; they may still get the job done but will do so with a little more difficulty. To fix this, you can try lubricating the parts. If the parts are incredibly loose or off the track, you will need a professional to help fix them.

Failing Opener Parts

Another reason you might be hearing grinding noises with your garage door is that the opener parts are failing or starting to fail. For example, the motor may be old and losing its ability to open the garage without struggling. Similarly, the gears in the motor could be wearing low, in which case they’ll end up slipping and catching the chain while the door is moving. Depending on your garage door setup, you may even have a coupler that has become decoupled. When this happens, you’ll need to replace the coupler entirely. You can look inside the housing of the opener system and see what’s going on inside, but you likely won’t be able to fix anything immediately. If the problem lies within the opener, you’ll likely have to replace specific parts instead of giving it a simple fix. After understanding why your garage door is making a grinding noise, you are better prepared to fix it. At Steel City Garage Doors, we are one of the best emergency garage door repairs in Pittsburgh. We can help eliminate any grinding noise that is bothering you or hurting your garage door and restore the quiet privacy that the garage door provides.