Why Did My Garage Door Come Off Its Tracks?

Many things may cause a garage door to slip off its rails and fall. Why should I know the possible causes of my garage door slipping off its tracks? You’ll be able to keep an eye out for difficulties that could occur if you have a better idea of what can set things off.

To begin, a garage door that malfunctions are pretty hazardous. You or any of the members of a family might be seriously injured. Your family’s safety is our priority, and this information will help you take preventative actions to ensure that.

There are several circumstances where we can encounter this issue, so let’s look.

Significant Reasons: Garage Door Come Off Its Tracks

• The primary reason is you smashed through the door with your vehicle.

In most cases, homeowners bump their doors with their automobiles and cause them to come off their tracks. Almost everyone has experienced this at some point. You are rushing out of the house in a hurry and crashing into your garage door. People have also accidentally backed into the door by forgetting to use the remote control. The best possible start to the day!

Significant Reasons Garage Door Come Off Its Tracks

Typically, a garage door is damaged when struck by a car, not just the two bottom pieces but also the whole door system. It also doesn’t have to be going at a high rate of speed – maybe only 3 to 5 mph (5 to 8 km/h) – to do severe harm. Garage doors often break loose from lift cables when a few rollers come loose from their tracks.

What To Do:

• If you are in this situation, the safest thing to do is switch off your automobile and leave the garage.
• Next, contact a garage door maintenance specialist to Get things back to normal.
• Look for a label with the business name that installed your garage door system.
• Try to Replace your old garage door opener or the door if that’s feasible.
• Don’t try to fix anything on your own.
• Finally, you’ll need to contact your vehicle and house insurance agents to finalize the process.

• The door’s weight causes the horizontal tracks to distort, or the tracks aren’t correctly aligned.

The second most prevalent problem occurs when your door system’s horizontal tracks are of poor quality. 

The overall weight of a 16-foot-wide double garage door may vary from 225 to 400 pounds (100 to 185 kg). The door might collapse to the garage floor if the horizontal tracks are not built of steel strong enough to hold the door’s weight.

Garage Door Back On Track

What To Do:

An ideal solution to prevent tracks from bending inward is to use 14-gauge steel (0.073-inch or 1.8 mm thick) and strengthen it with an L-shaped angle iron (2-inch x 2-inch, 13 gauge).

• Occasionally, a roller may get worn and shatter.

One or two of your garage door rollers breaking due to excessive wear or being of inferior quality may strain the other rollers in the hardware system. Additional rollers may break or come off the track due to this tension.

In addition, the additional weight placed on the other rollers might cause the horizontal Door Rails to bend, and we all know what happens then. Remember that the more weight you have on your garage door, the worse the repercussions will be.

Occasionally, a roller may get worn and shatter.

What To Do: 

• There are a variety of rollers for garage doors on the market. Nylon, steel, and nylon-coated steel versions are also available.
• There’s a crucial question about ball bearings: A nylon-coated steel roller should have the same bearings as its steel counterpart. All things being equal, a more significant number is preferable to a smaller one—request at least ten ball bearings on your rollers.

• A lift cable has snapped.

If your garage door is ancient and hasn’t been serviced in a while, this is a possible problem. Each side of the door has a set of lift wires. The drum is linked to a steel shaft that holds a torsion spring, and each cable is wound around the drum’s grooves. The cable will unwind and shatter without notice when the door’s alignment is compromised.

A lift cable has snapped.

What To Do:

If a lift cable fails, the door’s weight will shift to one side. However, only one side of the door can bear the weight of the whole structure. On average, one side of a window will shut and stay open in such a situation.

It’s simple to understand how the rollers might fall off the track system with the door in such an Imbalanced Configuration.

Bottom Line

You can protect yourself and your loved ones from damage if you know how this happens. The garage door’s most significant moving part of your house may be quite hazardous if it comes off its tracks.

The danger of severe harm rises significantly when a garage door is out of alignment. We suggest that you get in touch with Elite Garage Door Tacoma.