Missoula, MTEast Missoula, Missoula
Most East Missoula garages date to the late 1970s with steel rollers that have worn their track grooves. Roller replacement from our Missoula crew, 4 miles out.
Warning signs
The complaint we hear out of East Missoula is almost always the same: a grinding or popping sound as the door travels, worse in the first cold snap of the year.
That's steel rollers riding in steel track, and by now most of those rollers have been doing it for close to fifty years. Housing out here mostly went up around 1977, which puts a lot of these garages right at the point where original hardware is worn past the point of adjustment. The rollers themselves develop flat spots or the stems bend slightly, and the door starts to bind instead of glide.
You'll feel it as a hitch partway up, or hear a rhythmic clunk that matches each roller passing the same worn section of track. On a lot of these doors the track has actually worn a groove that matches the roller's wear pattern, so a new roller in an old groove can still catch until the track gets a light dressing too.
We don't swap rollers on a door that hasn't told us what's wrong first. If the noise is coming from the opener chain or a dry hinge, replacing rollers won't fix it, and we'll say so rather than sell a job that doesn't address the actual fault.
Watch-outs
Nylon rollers are the usual swap-in, and on their own they're a straightforward job. The complication in East Missoula is what's attached to the rollers after forty-plus years: brackets that have rusted to the track, hinges with stripped screw holes from one too many re-tightenings, and track sections that have bowed slightly out of plumb from decades of a door riding rough.
We also see sagging panels on these older single-car doors, light enough gauge steel that years of a binding roller have actually dented the panel edge where the roller stem sits. Replacing the roller doesn't un-dent the panel, and we'll tell you up front if that's the case rather than let you think new rollers solved it.
Winters here are genuinely cold, and cold steel is less forgiving than warm steel - a bracket that would bend a little in July can crack in January.
Questions
Cold makes steel brittle and grease stiff. A roller that's been riding rough all summer finally binds hard once temperatures drop, which is why a lot of East Missoula calls come in during the first cold snap. The wear was already there; the cold just stopped it from sliding past the damage quietly.
Often just the rollers, but on houses from the late 1970s we commonly find the track has worn a groove matching the old roller's flat spot. If that groove is shallow, new rollers ride fine. If it's deep, the track needs dressing or replacing or the new rollers wear the same way within a season.
We run out of Missoula, about 4 miles away, and cover East Missoula as part of the regular service area - see our East Missoula service area page for coverage details.
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Missoula Garage Door Pros repairs and installs garage doors, springs and openers in Missoula, MT and the surrounding area.
