One of the support brackets on my wood tilt-up garage door is bent. It’s a relatively minor problem, except that the torquing caused by the bent bracket tends to unscrew the bolt that holds the bracket onto the door itself.
The door hardware is so old that I can’t tell who made it. I don’t see anything online that looks like the hardware I have. Only one end of the bracket has a bolt; the other end is permanently attached to the hardware that attaches to the door jamb of the garage.
Right now I’m wondering if I should bother to get a new bracket, get an entire new hardware set for that side of the garage, or replace this stupid door with a nicer roll-down door.
Added to the problem is that I’m renting. The landlady insists that the bent bracket is my fault, so if I want it fixed, I have to pay for it. I’m unable to convince her that tilt-up doors are obsolete. Very few houses in this area still have them, but obviously she wants to spend as little money as possible.
Have you had a garage door expert (check your yellow pages) come out and appraise the repair cost? They’re familiar with what replacement parts are available. You might be looking at some tiny little amount of money to fix it.
If I were renting, I’d spend as little as possible.
Also old garage doors are not up to code in many places. Does it have an emergency stop light in case some kid or dog gets under the door while the door is going down? Will it automatically go up if something, like you, stop it from going all the way down to the garage floor?
If not, look into local codes. As you are a renter, the landlady may well be responsible for keeping the rental property up to code. That could mean her buying a new garage door opener and other hardware. It could also mean her being rather unhappy with you.
Seems easy to fix. there are solutions. There are ways to lock the bolt in… more firmly. (telfon tape. plumbers tape does a fine job. Well actually any sort of plastic can increase friction in that thread… by increasing surface area that is in contact. )
There are ways to reduce the torque that does undoes the bolt. (eg a washer )
To straighten the bracket you have to bend it further than ‘true’.
So you can only straight the bracket when its removed from the door.
But a frame may get its firmness from shape, eg a curve , which can be hard to put back in. It may be possible to hammer the curve back in. Or perhaps it can have a strengthening plate welded on at the bent/weak section.
Most such doors are manual – you get out of your car, grab the handle to and pull it up to open, get back into your car & drive it inside, then get out of your car & pull it down to close the door. I’ve never seen an automated tilt-type garage door.
So none of those safety code requirements apply to manually-operated doors.
Can you work on getting this bolt to not unscrew? If it’s a bolt and nut, tighten it really hard, and/or add a second nut. If it’s bolted into wood, repair the hole so it holds tighter.
Then oil everything so there’s less torque to begin with.
WTF? What did you do to bend the bracket other than normal use? She has to fix it, if not you should take her to court for failure to provide reasonable maintenance in a timely manner. Having a garage with a broken door is a security and safety issue.
If I were renting, I’d straighten the bracket by pounding on it with the biggest/heaviest hammer I could get my hands on. Then address the loosening bolt. Then again, the last time I rented I “repaired” moulding damage by sculpting toothpaste.
Tilt-up garage doors are obsolete? And the third post automatically assumes that the garage door is… automatic. Am I in some kind of backward garage-door time warp? All the houses round here have manual up-and-over garage doors. Not that any of us keep our cars in our garages, of course - where would all the junk go?
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Most such doors are manual – you get out of your car, grab the handle to and pull it up to open, get back into your car & drive it inside, then get out of your car & pull it down to close the door. I’ve never seen an automated tilt-type garage door.
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Our whole neighborhood in California had tilt-up doors with openers. The geometry of the leverage for a machine to pull the door open is screwy compared to a sectional roll-up, resulting in the opener track being at quite a tilt with the machine head at about six feet off the floor. This made it risky to park our Jeep inside - go just a couple inches too far and you’d hit the opener, either damaging it or the windshield. And, when there’s no car inside, the machine was at head-whacking height.
One of the best $1200 or so we ever spent on that house was to have a roll-up door and new opener installed. It made the garage actually usable, and made the driveway effectively larger as we no longer neeeded to keep three or four feet clear in front of the door.
What did you do to bend the bracket other than normal use? She has to fix it, if not you should take her to court for failure to provide reasonable maintenance in a timely manner. Having a garage with a broken door is a security and safety issue.