…leading to the deck. We manhandled it back onto the track, so you’d think, but now it won’t open more than a couple inches! If this has happened with your patio sliding door, did you call someone to fix it? It seems no one wants to come and fix it (put in new rollers on top or bottom), they just want to sell us a new door. Shit.
Hardware stores sell replacement rollers.
Remove the door completely, and then take the roller assembles into a good hardware store and see if they can match it.
How badly mangled are the tracks? What kind of condition is the door in? What makes you think it only needs new rollers?
I generally fix stuff like this myself. Sliding glass doors aren’t rocket science. The tracks need to be smooth, straight, and level, and there’s an adjustment screw that will raise or lower the rollers so you get a nice fit. If the tracks aren’t perfectly straight you can adjust the rollers so that they have more play in them, but if you adjust them too far the door will easily jump out of the tracks.
If the door is really whacked out, it may be that it needs to have the entire door pulled out, the tracks removed, the wood underneath repaired, then the tracks re-installed and the door put back into place. If that’s the case then it would cost you almost as much to repair it as it would cost to just put a new door in. I could see why everyone would want to just replace it if that is the case.
If it really is just the rollers that are bad, you can buy replacements for those. They are usually just held in by a couple of screws and aren’t hard to replace. Just remember to adjust them all the way down so that you can get the door back into place, then once the door is on track adjust them up until the door fits snug in the tracks.
ETA: If this happens again, next time just adjust the rollers before putting the doors back on track. You don’t need to manhandle the doors back into place. They go in easier than that.
OK. Thanks for the information.
When my door got stuck, it turned out I didn’t have it back on the track as soundly as I thought. A bit more force and I got it fixed. I don’t know about yours but my glass doors are heavy.
I have replaced the rollers to my patio screen doors. No big deal.
You may not have the rollers on the track. Get low and look to besure that the rollers are stradeling the track.
You need to determine where the door is dragging. Top, bottom, sides.
If the rollers are on track and it is dragging on the bottom take a careful look under the door to see if raising it will help. If so find the adjustment screw and raise the door keeping it level.
If the wheels are the problem remove door. Remove the wheel truck and head to the hardware store…
I worked on a bunch of sliding doors as a locksmith and I’ll tell you the magic trick for 95% of them: make sure the door is in the track properly first, then clean out all the gunk from the track and the door, then WD-40 the crap out of it. If that doesn’t work, the posts above have you covered.
Agree with the comments above - chances are it only looks like it’s in the track. It can be a bit tricky to get it to set right but keep trying and you’ll get it.
I’ll just note that the manhandling may not get the rollers back on track. You’ll need to make sure that you are **lifting the weight off the rollers **before moving them back over the track.
The top of the door runs in a deep channel which is designed to keep it from falling out. All of the weight is on the rollers in the bottom of the door. To get a sliding door out, you lift the door upwards into the channel and then swing the bottom of the door free of the rollers and pull it out on an angle.
To get it back in, you put the top into the channel and push it up so the bottom can swing in straight and then sit it squarely down on the track. This last step is the one you will need to do, as it sounds like you may have one wheel on and one wheel off.
I had tried pushing a door back onto the track and broke the side off one of the wheels, which, while ultimately successful (after I picked out the broken bit), is not ideal as it came off track more often.
Don’t use WD-40 unless you have the correct grease to reapply afterwards. WD-40 is a cleaner and water displacer, NOT a lubricant (although it will lubricate temporarily, it’s not a long-term solution)…