Garage door hard to open

[ollie76]

Arrgh,

My garage door is making me mental and I cannot figure out what the problem is.

I have noticed that when you engage the garage door opener, it really fights to open the door (but it will). It tends to pull on the door until it gives way with a bit of a violent start. If you put the door back down and immediately open it again......no problems at all and the opener moves really smooth up and down. Let it sit for two minutes and try again and it will open violently again.

So I decided to do some investigation. Disconnected the garage door completely and tried it by hand. Again, you can easily feel that initial resistance but you can over come it with a good yank. When you put the door back down by hand and immediately open it......no resistance. Let it sit for 2 mins and you will again feel that resistance and have to give it a good yank. So, the problem is in the door somewhere.

I initially thought the seal on bottom was sticking to floor but I lubed it with silicone spray with no change. Then I noticed there are seals between the door panels and I thought they might be sticking so I again lubed them with silicone spray with no change. I inspected between the panels for extra paint that might be sticking but found no problems.

I have checked all the rollers when the door is down to see if one was binding or something but they all spin pretty easily.

What is going on here? The door is very easy to open (and stays open in most positions on the way up) after you have overcome that initial resistance and everything seems well balanced. Let it back down, wait two minutes......fights you. I have been pulling and pulling on it trying to find out what the problem is but it is completely defeating me!

 

[upndown]

If you've your door painted recently, check the door jambs for tacky paint, not just the stop moulding. How old is your door?

 

[ollie76]

Door is 13 years old. I have not painted the door since we purchased house 3 years ago. Note that it has behaved like this since we moved in.

 

[pattenp]

If you have torsion springs have you ever oiled the spring coils?

 

[ollie76]

Yes I spray garage door lube in them every year since we moved in

 

[Weekend_warrior]

Like it was said above I would tighten all the fasteners. I also would lube up the torsion springs as all the hinges and rollers. Make sure everything rolls freely. Maybe even a little lube in the tracks. How about where the bar turns in the mounts? Is do they have bearings in them? If so, it maybe that the bearings could be going bad. Also inspect the cables to make sure the mounts aren't week or the cables frayed. Make sure to lube them up.

It may also be that the spring has weakened over time and its harder for it over come the initial inertia to get the door rolling, but I'd think that would constant over any motion of the door. At thirteen years old they maybe a bit sacked.

I'd bet in going through everything that you will likely spot what the problem or what is causing.

 

[ollie76]

Fellas, I'm telling you this is gonna put me in the crazy house.

With the door left down for a couple mins, I try giving it a light yank and I can feel it sticking. I then inspect all the hinges and rollers......everything is free. I can spin all the rollers in the track with my fingers.

All springs, bearings, etc have been lubed and there's no loose parts. To my eye, the entire installation looks tip top. When I pull up the door, I can hear the sound of stuck rubber just for a second before it starts moving. It HAS to be a seal of some kind but I'll be dammed if I can narrow it down because it's just not obvious where it's getting stuck. trying to listen and pull the door to see if I can catch it is going to make me go insane soon. I actually threw fine sand along the concrete where the bottom seal is to see if this helps but it made no difference.

Once you break that initial resistance, running the door up and down it's a smooth as silk. It's only when it sits for literally 60 seconds that it sticks again.

 

[bdbecker]

Could there be some sort of vacuum/suction effect occurring with the seals? For that matter, some sort of negative/positive building pressure? That could explain why if you open and close it its fine, but when you let it sit for a minute or two it comes back.

 

[ollie76]

Yeah, I don't think so. I think, being an attached garage, that the door leading into the garage would alert me to such a problem.

However, it has occurred to me that there's a seal I've not looked at. The seal at the top of the door......when I get home, I will look there. Gotta be the problem.

 

[abachman]

If the garage door is kind of tongue and groove on the sections, some one of these is binding. I had this issue and ended up shimming several of the hinges on one side only.

 

[pima67]

To resolve a similar problem with our doors, I had to remove the paint on the weather strip on the sides and top of the door. The sun heats the door and strip and softens the paint and it sticks the weather strip to the door (doors face east). Next time one sticks before opening, immediately feel the strip and door to see if the paint is tacky.

 

[ollie76]

Had a good look at it today. I think that the door was painted a couple years ago just before we bought the house and the seals on the left and right kinda sank into the paint creating areas where the seal will stick. I noticed big long grooves in the paint where the seals meet up with the door.

I think I will start by scraping that off and go from there.

 

[mike in tucson]

Also you might check to see if the door is "parallelograming", i.e., the door rollers are not parallel to the tracks. When you do the original tug, you are adjusting the door slightly. When you close it, it settles into a nonaligned position. Perhaps you are having to move the panels slightly horizontally in relation to each other....perhaps only the bottom two panels

 

[ollie76]

I will check for sure. If that was happening though, wouldn't at least one of the rollers be tight in the track? When the door is down and stuck, I can reach in and spin all the little wheels with my finger. They all spin with very little resistance.

 

[ollie76]

Well we were all on the right track. It was a layer of sloppy paint along the top of the door where it meets the top seal. Must have been still wet and tacky when the previous owner put the door down after painting and a thick ridge formed. I sanded it all down and it seems to have fixed the problem.

It was difficult to see given the location and was also hard to get to.

 

[manwithtools]

Was going to suggest the exterior seals. I've had this experience once before on my doors, it turned out to be the seals had gotten very stiff over the years. Replaced them and the problem went way.

Glad you figured it out.