Your garage door isn’t quite opening right — if it’s opening at all — and looking around, it seems like something might be off about the springs or the pulleys. These work together to manage the weight of your garage door so it can open and close easily, so even small problems can become obvious very quickly. Let’s see if we can figure out whether this is your problem:
Assuming nothing is so overtly visibly wrong with your springs or pulleys that you can tell with a simple visual inspection, here are a few common signs of a problem in one or both of these components of your garage door:
There are a few reasons you might see damage on your pulleys or your springs, but it mostly comes down to not having professional maintenance performed on your garage door. Over time, the ball bearings in a pulley will wear out; over time, the tension in your springs will go out. Maintenance helps spot and resolve these issues as they develop, while also correcting the pressures and problems that might lead to them developing unusually fast, such as high moisture or poor lubrication.
As with most DIY projects involving your garage door, it can’t really be recommended unless you know exactly what you’re doing and have the right tools at hand. Garage doors are dangerously heavy, and the springs in question are frequently under very high tension — both of which can lead to catastrophic failure if managed improperly.
At best, a mistake in your DIY will likely result in even more expenses down the line to correct the mistake. At worst, a falling garage door or broken spring can seriously harm people or property. It simply isn’t worth the risk to take on this particular DIY project, unless you intend to study and become an expert on the matter — hiring a professional to tackle it for you just makes more sense in this case.
If you ignore your damaged springs or pulleys, they won’t get better or even stay the same; they’ll degrade further over time, and eventually, you’ll have one or more components of your garage fully fail. This can be expensive and annoying if you’re lucky; dangerous if you’re not. If your garage door won’t open, you may end up with your car stuck in your garage unexpectedly.
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