What to do when your garage door comes off its track

What should you do first when your garage door comes off track

Stop using the door and make the area safe before you do anything else. An off-track door is often still attached to springs and cables under high tension, and every extra attempt to move it can twist it further or let it drop.

These steps keep everyone safe and keep a track repair from turning into a bigger one.

1. 1Stop the doorIf it is still moving, press the wall button once to stop it. Don't press it again to reverse it.
2. 2Clear the areaGet children, pets and anyone else out of the garage and away from the opening. Nobody walks or stands under the door.
3. 3Cut power to the openerUnplug the opener so nobody hits a remote or keypad by mistake. If the plug isn't within safe reach, switch off the breaker instead.
4. 4Leave the door where it isDon't lift, lower or push the door, and don't pull the red release cord. A door that is partway open should stay that way until it can be secured.
5. 5Take photos from a safe distancePhotos of both tracks, both bottom corners and the springs above the door help a technician see what happened.
6. 6Call a technicianTell the office whether the door is up, down or partway, and whether a car is inside.

How can you tell a garage door is off its track

The clearest sign is a roller that has popped out of its channel, but a door that sits crooked or hangs lower on one side usually means the same thing. Look along both vertical tracks and around the curve where they turn toward the ceiling.

• One or more rollers sitting outside the track, or a gap between a roller and the track.
• A door that is tilted, twisted or lower on one side.
• A cable hanging slack at a bottom corner or unwound from the drum at the top.
• A track that is bent, kinked or pulled away from the wall.
• Grinding, scraping or a loud bang followed by the door stopping.

What causes a garage door to come off its track

An off-track door almost always traces back to one of a handful of causes: an impact, a cable failure, loose track bolts, a bent track, worn rollers, a spring problem or something in the door's path. Clopay's troubleshooting guide puts misaligned tracks at the top of the list for stuck doors, and the chart in this section sums up what each cause looks like.

• Impact is the easiest to picture. A bumper, a mower or a trailer catches the bottom of the door, a section bends and the rollers pop out. If that is what happened, our guide for when you've backed into your garage door covers the next steps.
• A cable problem is the sneakiest. When one lift cable snaps or slips off its drum, that side of the door loses support, the door tilts and the rollers on the high side can bind or jump out. See what a snapped or loose cable means for how to spot it.
• Loose bolts and worn rollers creep up slowly. Vibration loosens track brackets over the years, and a cracked or worn roller can ride out of the channel long before anyone notices the wobble.

Why is a garage door that's off track dangerous

It is dangerous because the door is heavy, partly unsupported and still connected to parts under high tension. Clopay calls the garage door the heaviest moving object in your home, and an off-track door can shift or fall when something lets go.

The springs are wound or stretched to balance the weight of the door, and the cables carry that load down to the bottom corners. When a door jams crooked in its tracks those forces are no longer balanced, and pulling on the door, running the opener or loosening a bracket can release them suddenly.

What should you not do when your garage door is off track

Don't try to make the door work. The instinct is to press the button again, shove the roller back in or pull the release cord, and each of those can turn a track repair into a much bigger one.

• Don't run the opener. It keeps pulling on a door that can't travel straight, which bends sections, strains the opener and can pull more rollers out of the track.
• Don't force rollers back into the track with a hammer, pry bar or pliers. The door is under load, and a roller that snaps back in can let the door lurch.
• Don't pull the red emergency release while the door is open or partway open. Chamberlain warns that if the springs are weak or broken, the door may fall rapidly and without warning.
• Don't loosen track bolts or brackets to make slack. The track is part of what is holding the door in place.
• Don't walk, drive or let kids play under a door that is stuck open.

Can I drive my car out if the garage door is off track

Only if the door is fully open, stable and well clear of the roof of the car, and even then it is safer to leave the car where it is. An off-track door can shift without warning, and a vehicle passing underneath is exactly where you don't want it to come down.

If the door is closed or stuck partway, the car stays inside until the door is secured. Don't lift the door by hand to get it out. Line up a ride or a second vehicle, and tell our office a car is inside so we can plan the repair around it.

If the car is outside and the door is stuck open, the bigger concerns are security and weather. Keep people out of the garage and away from the opening, and let us know the door won't close so we can talk through the safest way to leave it until the repair.

Long winters up here raise the stakes. A door stuck open lets lake-effect snow drift straight into the garage, and an icy driveway makes it easy to slide into a door that is already out of line. We secure and repair off-track doors in Traverse City and across the surrounding counties.

Can you put a garage door back on track yourself

We don't recommend it. Online videos make it look like a matter of bending the track and tapping a roller back in, but they rarely deal with what caused the derailment, and that cause is often a cable, a spring or a bent section that makes the door unsafe to move.

Clopay's service guide says track realignment can be challenging and dangerous, especially on heavier doors, and tells homeowners not to repair or replace cables themselves. Insulated steel doors, wood doors and oversize pole barn doors are heavy enough that a small mistake has serious consequences.

What you can safely do is prevention and observation: keep the tracks clean, lubricate the rollers and hinges and watch for the early warning signs listed above.

What does off-track garage door repair involve

An off-track repair starts with securing the door and finding out why it came off, then fixing the track, rollers and cables and rebalancing the door. The track itself is often the easy part.

When a section is badly damaged, a new door can make more sense than a repair, and we'll tell you plainly which way we would go. Either way the estimate is free. Our garage door repair page covers the track, cable, roller and panel work we do, and spring repair covers the springs. We handle this work across Grand Traverse County and the neighboring counties, and a typical repair includes the following.

• Secure the door so it cannot move, and take tension off the system where the repair calls for it.
• Inspect both cables, the drums, the bottom brackets and the springs for damage.
• Straighten or replace bent track and re-anchor loose track brackets.
• Replace damaged rollers and hinges and set the door back in its tracks.
• Repair or replace a section if the impact bent it.
• Rebalance the door, then test the opener and its safety reversal.

How do you keep a garage door from coming off track again

Keep the tracks clear and straight, keep the rollers in good shape and catch cable and balance problems early. Most of that comes down to a few habits and a yearly check.

• Keep bikes, bins and shovels away from the tracks and out of the door's path.
• Wipe dirt out of the tracks, but don't grease them.
• Lubricate the rollers and hinges with a garage door lubricant.
• Look at the cables at each bottom corner for fraying or rust, as DASMA recommends.
• Check the door's balance with our garage door balance test.
• Book a yearly garage door maintenance visit so a technician checks the tracks, cables and springs.
• If the door acts up in other ways, our guide to why a garage door won't open walks through the checks in order.