We’re going to head outside to the garage and show you how to properly and successfully lubricate your garage door and get that squeaking sound gone. Let’s head out to the garage and get started.
All right friends, inside the garage now, and there is the Dupont White Lithium Grease that we did a review on in the previous article. If you have not checked that article out, definitely check it out. We walk you through why this is the more popular grease as opposed to all the other ones such as WD-40 or the garage door silicone-style grease. So with that said, let’s dive right into the project. I recommend wearing safety gloves and safety glasses.
Next, you want to make sure your garage door is in the full closed position and locate your red rope, which is your disconnect rope, which disconnects the garage door from the motor track and be careful as you do it. You’ll notice that the hinge up above turns 90 degrees and that is now completely disconnected from the track. There are a lot of hinges that we will be lubricating and I’ll start with this one for example. As you can see here, these hinges spin as the garage door opens and closes. So we have a lot. We’ve got the rollers, we’ve got the springs, and all sorts of hinges. So let’s go and grab the lithium grease and get started.
All right, got the lithium grease and I wish I had better light but the garage door has to be closed and just be careful. Again, you just want to spray a little bit on each side and that will lubricate itself as the garage door opens and closes over the next few days. As you can see, a little cut through there, and that will allow it all to be worked into the hinge. I will continue this and lubricate every single one of these hinges on the actual face of the door. Okay, so I took a few minutes and lubricated all of the hinges on the face of the door, and just a quick recap I sprayed inside as well as on the entire cut or seam of the hinge and inside the opposite side.
Let’s now direct your attention to the rollers and you’ll notice a larger amount that has the roller portion hinge as well as a very similar hinge that we just lubricated, so we will do it the exact same. What I can do is carefully spin this hinge where I see the scene here, spray it, and inside a little bit, on each side, and I’ll do the same for the roller as well. Now. The rollers will depend on which style you have. Some have bearings in, some don’t. As you can see, ours are just plastic and no bearings, so there’s really no benefit to greasing inside the actual wheel portion of the roller. However, just this little seam here might be a good idea and we’ll spray on each side, and again, as the garage door opens and closes over the next few days that grease will work itself in all the seams of the roller and hinges, ultimately coating the entire hinge and roller in alleviating that loud, scratching and annoying sound.
What I’ll do is I’ll continue lubricating all of the actual roller hinges, the bracket, and the additional hinge up here. At this point, I have all the rollers, the entire brackets, and the additional hinges on the roller brackets all lubricated, and you may need a ladder for the top hinge here.
What I want to stress, as you do this I recommend not spraying the track. Please do not spray inside the track. What will happen is over time the air and wind will kick up dust and dirt and grime and if any previous owner or anyone used WD-40 on this track, it’s basically going to absorb all that dirt, all that grime, and cause nothing but heartache for this track. What I recommend instead of spraying it, do an inspection of the entire internal portion of the track and clean it with a shop towel.
From here, one additional item where the track meets the upper rounded track portion and the lower track portion, you have a seam, over time it can cause a few sounds. Just go ahead and carefully lubricate that on each side. I’ll kind of clean that up to make it more presentable, and you’ll also do the opposite side where the two portions of the track connect.
Real quick, let’s talk a little bit more about the actual rollers. There’s a couple of different styles of rollers. You have a metal roller, and those metal rollers are more advanced and more popular, and nowadays garage door openers, they have ball-bearings inside the actual roller portion and they last a lot longer. However, when they last a lot longer they do require a little bit more maintenance, so what we recommend is lubricating your ball bearings twice a year, once in the spring, and then once in the fall, right before winter. However, in our case, again, we have plastic rollers and they do not have ball bearings and these are the cheaper-style rollers and they need to be replaced or recommended to be replaced every two to three years.
Next thing I want to talk about is the upper portion of spring and pulleys. You can see that we do not have any pulleys on our garage door. Our garage door is not the same as all others. Some garage doors have pulleys that move, and those pulleys also have ball-bearings inside them and need to be lubricated. So in the event that you have pulleys, take a few minutes and properly lubricate the internal bearings.
The next thing that we need to direct our attention to is the overhead track, and in the event that you have a chain please do not lubricate or spray your chain. It already has a factory coating on it that propels moisture and you do not want to harm that or interrupt that coating in any way. However, in our case, we have basically a belt as you can see here with teeth, and as it goes inside the motor that’s what grabs it and moves your entire garage door. We are not going to lubricate our belt. What we want to do is spray the grease on a shop towel and what we are going to do is lubricate the bottom portion as well as the top portion of this actual track or rail, and the reason being is because of that trap right down there… I’ll shift the ladder and show you.
Okay, upon the ladder, and as you can see the way that that bracket mounts itself on the track or rail, it slides on the bottom side. You can see just a little bit of wear here as well as the top side. So again, we’re going to spray a shop towel and carefully lubricate this portion of the rail or track.
Real quick, I want to direct our attention to this pulley here. As you can see, that is what the belt wraps itself around. We are not going to spray that because we do not want any of that lithium grease on this belt. We’re all out of shop towels, so we’re going to do this as clean and nice as we can. Just make a fast, clean spray along the bottom portion of the track all the way down and you will also just grab it with your hand, pull this belt down, do not put any grease on your fingers or the belt, and spray this top portion here.
Over the next few days of opening and closing, all that grease is going to get inside that mount there and properly lubricate all its seams. It’s also important, this is as far back as the trolley mount goes. You don’t need to lubricate the portion in between the trolley mount and that pulley. The next part, this little brace mount here where it connects here, and you can see it basically slides in between this hinge here, and we want to lubricate both sides of this entire hinge.
Down off the ladder, and the next thing we need to direct our attention to is the upper springs. There are two types. You have an extension spring or a torsion spring. The extension spring, you do not need to lubricate. However, with the torsion spring there are no pulleys and what happens is the garage door opens and closes, is this contracts and then expands, and because this torsion spring contracts or another way to put it is it winds up, all those seams inside that spring rub against each other, so we’re going to spend a couple of minutes and carefully and properly spray each torsion spring.
Upon the ladder now and as you can see again, we do not have an extension spring as this door opens and closes, so just carefully run a across and after lubricating or spraying this entire spring, what I did, it was it got a little messy but just carefully, don’t apply any pressure, just kind of slowly work it in like this. You’ll do this both for this spring as well as the spring on the opposite side.
Check this out, YouTubers. What I did next was I took the straw off the actual can and then sprayed from a slightly further distance and basically put a really good coating on the entire radius of the spring, both the left side and the right side.
All right, YouTubers, I’m off the ladder at this point and we have basically completed our DIY lubrication process, and be patient as you open and close the door over the next few days that lithium grease is going to make its way into all the seams, properly seat itself, and lubricate all moving portions of the garage door. A quick recap, why we use that Lithium Grease? It is going to stay put and work its way into the moving parts as opposed to a more runny or watery product such as WD-40, and what I mean by that the Lithium Grease will get better as time goes on while the WD-40 will get worse as time goes on.
Before opening the garage door, let’s reconnect the trolley mount to the monitor, just like that. Back at the wall-mounted garage door opener and closer push button, let’s go ahead and open the door. Again, the first couple of times you will hear a little bit of sound. Let that Lithium Grease work itself in. That sounded a lot better, and we will close it and open it and close it one more time. Do not continuously open and close this until that scratching sound goes away because what you’ll do is you’ll overheat your motor and that motor can fail, so don’t do that.
All right, YouTubers, it has been a few days and the garage door has probably opened and closed a good five to six times, and let’s go ahead and open the garage door and listen. That sounds a lot better, and I want to close the door now and see how that sounds. Again, Lithium Grease only works itself into the scenes and gets better and better as time goes on. Check that out. No scratchy, squeaky sounds that are going to blow your eardrums or wake up kids when they’re sleeping at five in the morning when you’re going to work.
That’s it, YouTubers. See, a quick, friendly DIY project. We recommend giving the garage door just a few days of up and down, closing and opening, for all of that lubrication to properly seat itself along with all parts, all hinges, and the entire track.
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