Lincolnwood, IL · Same-day service
Lubrication Done Properly, and the Can That Makes It Worse
The can most people reach for is the wrong one. WD-40 is a water displacer and a penetrant. It is excellent at freeing a seized bolt, and it is a solvent, which means spraying it along a garage door strips out whatever grease is left in the bearings and leaves a thin, dust-collecting film behind. Doors get quieter for a fortnight and worse after that.
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What belongs on a garage door is a white lithium grease or a purpose-made silicone lubricant, applied at specific points and nowhere else. BH Garage Door does that as part of a tune-up across Lincolnwood, on doors of every age.
Where It Goes, and the Places It Must Not
It goes on hinge pivots, roller stems and the bearing race behind each wheel, the end and centre bearings on a torsion shaft, the lock bar and its guides, and as a light coat along the spring coils to cut coil-to-coil friction and slow surface rust. Torsion springs in particular quieten noticeably once the coils stop dragging on one another.
It must not go on the tracks. Rollers roll rather than slide, and grease in the channel turns into a black paste of grit that grinds the wheels down. It must not go on the face of a nylon roller tyre, on the photo-eye lenses, or on a belt drive's belt. A screw-drive rail is the one exception and wants the manufacturer's own grease, not a spray.
A Cold Garage Changes the Answer
An attached garage sharing a wall with heated rooms sits well above outside temperature all winter, and ordinary grease behaves itself in there. A detached garage at the end of a long drive does not. In that building heavy grease stiffens overnight, and a door that ran perfectly in November drags on every cold morning in January.
For those we use a silicone spray or a lighter lithium formulation that stays workable at low temperature. It is also why an unheated detached garage is worth doing twice a year instead of once.
What a Tune-Up Adds Beyond a Spray Can
Lubrication is the fifteen minutes at the end. Before it comes the part no can will do: checking balance with the opener disconnected, going round every hinge fastener and track bracket lag, spinning the rollers to find the dead one, and running both cables through gloved fingers hunting for broken strands.
Then the opener. Chain or belt tension, travel limits set so the door meets the floor without driving into it, force brought back to what the door genuinely needs, and both safety reversals tested. A door that has been lubricated but left out of balance is simply a quiet door with the same problem.
Other work we do in Lincolnwood
- Torsion Springs
- Extension Springs
- Roller Repair
- Panel Replacement
- Smart Openers
- Commercial
- Custom Doors
- Maintenance
- Safety Inspection
- Spring Replacement
- Opener Repair
- Installation
- Emergency Service
- Cable Repair
- Track Repair
Lubrication in nearby towns
More on garage door lubrication, or everything we cover in Lincolnwood.
Questions
Lincolnwood questions about this job
How often should a garage door be lubricated?
Twice a year suits most doors here, spring and autumn, and the autumn one matters more. A door in an unheated detached garage, or one running many times a day, is worth doing more often than that.
It still squeaks after I lubricated it. Why?
Two usual reasons. Either the noise comes from a sealed bearing that lubricant cannot reach, in which case the roller or bearing is worn out, or it is not friction at all but a loose hinge or a section rubbing the jamb seal. Both want looking at rather than more spray.
Will lubrication fix a door that is getting harder to lift?
It helps a little and it is not the cause. A door that is heavy by hand is short on spring tension, and that does not come back out of a can. The tune-up will tell you which of the two you are actually dealing with.
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