Damaged or misaligned tracks
Tracks take the punishment when a vehicle nudges the door, when a roller seizes and gouges the channel, or when a bracket works loose over years of vibration. Once a track is out of true, the door grinds at one point in its travel, sticks halfway, or jumps a roller out of the channel altogether.
Minor distortion can be straightened in place. Anything creased, split at a joint or bent at the radius needs the section replaced and the whole run re-shimmed — the detail is on the garage door track repair page.
Garage door opener and motor problems
Opener faults split into mechanical and electronic. Mechanically, a stripped nylon drive gear or a disengaged trolley makes the motor run happily while the door stays put. Electronically, a failed capacitor gives you a motor that hums but will not start, and a damaged control board gives intermittent behaviour that changes day to day.
In this part of Johannesburg, load shedding adds a third category. Repeated hard power cuts kill backup batteries early, corrupt stored travel limits and, over time, take out boards. If your door stopped behaving after a bout of outages, start at the battery and the board — garage door opener repair covers the full test sequence.
Noisy, shuddering or uneven doors
Noise is diagnostic. A rhythmic squeal that speeds up with the door is dry roller bearings. A metallic grinding is a roller running on a damaged track or a bearing that has collapsed. A deep bang partway through travel is usually a hinge or a section joint taking load it should not be taking. A rattling that changes when the door is nearly closed points at loose track brackets.
Shuddering, where the door climbs in a series of jerks, is a balance problem: the springs no longer match the door weight and the motor is dragging it. Left alone it will end in a burnt motor or a snapped spring, and it is exactly the fault an annual garage door maintenance visit is designed to catch.