You likely use your garage door every day: up and down it goes, several times daily. All that use can take a toll on the rollers and tracks of your garage door system. Sometimes the track can get bent, which makes it difficult to open and close the door. This is a safety and nuisance issue that should be fixed immediately, as bent garage door tracks can damage your property and pose a safety hazard for occupants.  

Why Did My Garage Door Become Bent? 

There are many reasons that this could happen. The important thing is to get the bend fixed immediately before more damage is allowed to happen.  

Here are some common contributing factors to bent garage doors:

  • Collisions: They’re called accidents for a reason. Maybe you backed up into the door when it was dark out and you couldn’t see. Or maybe your new teen driver accelerated when he should have braked. Whatever the case, collisions are a major cause of bent frames, leading to misalignments.
  • Broken Cables or Drums: These mechanisms are responsible for pulling and supporting your garage door. If they break, they can release hundreds of pounds of weight onto the tracks all at once, bending and warping them.
  • Obstructions: Objects that get in the way of the garage door can mess with the door’s mechanics. If something falls onto the tracks, that object can keep the rollers or cables from moving properly. The resulting tension often spurs misalignment.
  • Age: Older garage doors can get rusted and corroded. It’s common and there’s nothing you can really do about this, except to engage in regular maintenance on your door and tracks over the years. Regardless, age is a major factor that can contribute to bent doors.  

How Will I Know if the Track is Bent?

You should be able to spot a bent or misaligned garage door track pretty easily because your door won’t open and close properly, if at all. You should be performing visual inspections of your garage door on a regular basis, anyway, and one of the things you should take a look at is the condition of the tracks. You’ll have to call a garage door repair technician if you spot something out of the ordinary. 

When a professional can diagnose and fix the problem early on, they may be able to realign the tracks rather than do an entire replacement, which saves you money.

Meantime, if you know your track is bent, do no use the garage door until the issue is addressed. If you continue to use it, you are putting the garage door, your home and occupants at risk.

Contact M&M Garage Doors

If you have a bent track on your garage door, call the professionals at M&M right away at (586) 610-5434 so we can make the repair quickly.