April-Always remember to wipe the inside of your vertical tracks down once every six months with a damp rag, doing this will remove the dust and dirt that your rollers will pick up as it travels up and down., and remember… do not grease the tracks. The purpose of the rollers on your garage door is to …roll! Putting grease on the track make the roller more likely to slide, rather than roll.
There are different types of rollers in the industry, each built for different applications. First, all rollers from all manufacturers are designed to run for 50,000 cycles, which should easily be the life of the door. Nylon rollers, typically with a black nylon roller, are the most common roller in the industry. As the door weight goes up, the roller will be upgraded to a metal roller, often with ball bearings for additional weight carrying capacity. Since the original rollers provided with your door are engineered to run for 50,000 cycles, there is no benefit to upgrading to a steel roller. Some disreputable service companies in our industry try to upsell unsuspecting customers on the “need” to go to a heavy duty steel roller, which they will provide for several hundred dollars, and they tell you, comes with a “lifetime guarantee.” Chances are very good that your existing rollers are perfectly fine, and paying several hundred dollars for “lifetime guaranteed rollers” is simply a waste of money.
Please check back in May, as we continue our discussion of garage door rollers and and quiet operation!