A garage door is the heaviest moving object in your house and the one nobody maintains. An hour a year, ideally in late spring before monsoon season, prevents most of the failures on the rest of this site.
Tucson's two hard seasons for garage doors are summer heat and monsoon wind, and both arrive together. Getting a door looked at in April or May means the things that fail in July are found while they are still cheap: a spring near the end of its cycle life, rollers hardened by UV, a bottom seal gone chalky, dust packed into the tracks, and a wide unreinforced door that would benefit from a strut before the first microburst finds it.
Greasing the track. It seems obviously right and it is exactly wrong. Rollers are meant to roll along the track, and lubricant there collects desert dust into an abrasive paste that makes rollers skid and wear. Tracks should be wiped clean; the hinges, rollers and bearings are what get lubricated.
Using the wrong lubricant. Light household oils thin out and run in a 120-degree garage, so a door that was quiet in March is dry and loud by July. A lithium or silicone-based garage door lubricant stays where it is put in summer heat.
A tune-up is not a warranty and we will not pretend it prevents everything. What it reliably does is convert emergencies into scheduled work. Finding a spring at 9,500 cycles in April means replacing it on a Tuesday afternoon at standard rates, rather than on a 108-degree Saturday with the car trapped inside and an after-hours premium on the invoice. The parts cost the same. Only the timing changes, and the timing is the expensive part.
Once a year at minimum, and late spring is the best timing so problems surface before summer heat and monsoon season. Twice a year if the door is your main entrance or the garage is particularly dusty.
Some of it safely: wiping the photo-eye lenses, checking for frayed cable, testing the safety reversal, wiping tracks out, and lubricating hinges and rollers with proper garage door lubricant. Never adjust or work on torsion springs.
A lithium or silicone-based garage door lubricant, which stays put at high temperatures. Avoid thin household oils that run out of bearings in a hot garage, and never lubricate the track itself.
Often it is the best money you can spend on one, because it tells you honestly how much life is left and lets you plan a replacement rather than being forced into one during monsoon season.
Related: Spring Repair · Cable Repair · Opener Repair
