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I disconnected my automatic garage door opener and I can see when closing the door manually, and it's almost at the bottom, the remaining panel gets stuck and it won't fully close. There is no visible barrier in the tracks or anywhere. However, I can't fully see the springs in this position. I'm not sure if the springs are the problem because I can open and close it fine up to that position. It's been working fine until today when I found one of the bottom wheels was displaced. I put it back in and it's still not fully closing.

Any idea what might be wrong?

Update: enter image description here

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  • Be very careful when troubleshooting this problem. Garage door springs are very strong and disconnecting cables attached to them can result in serious injury.
    – bib
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 0:25
  • I was thinking of calling professionals. Do you know how much they charge?
    – Grasper
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 1:11

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Clearly something is binding, catching or blocking the door sections or roller wheels in the tracks. It could be as simple as one of the track mounting bolts has come loose and is binding with the roller as it tries to go by.

It is also possible that the door is becoming wedged as it gets toward the lowest position. There may be a small diameter cable attached to the lower section of the door on each side that goes up toward the top and spools onto the spring assist lifter at the top. It is possible that one of these cables has broken, become detached or has doubled over itself in the spool mechanism. One or the other of these could cause the door to not be supported uniformly on each side or the cable not allowed to un-spool nicely on one side.

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  • it is little wedged but I don't think that would cause it to stop as it only stops 1 foot above the ground. I can't really see the cables.
    – Grasper
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 1:14
  • I think you need to look for the cables. For a typical multi-section roll up door the cables travel from the bottom of the lowest door section up to the spring lift assist that is mounted in the wall above the door position. (Note that there are some other cable systems that use pulleys and extend to long linear springs that are parallel to and above the horizontal track sections). More common are the type that use a rotational torsion spring mounted above the door. This latter type has a spool mechanism on each end that winds up the cable as the door opens. Obviously as the door (continued)
    – Michael Karas ♦
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 1:51
  • (continued from above) closes the cable unwinds from this spool and lets the door down. You should be able to see the cables in between the vertical part of the door track and the door frame. As I mentioned in my answer there can be several types of failure of the cable properly wind onto and off the spools. One common one is that the cable does not stay in its track in the spool and one turn will get caught under the previous turn. Then when trying to unwind the cable cannot pull out from that next turn and it binds and will not let the door go all the way down.
    – Michael Karas ♦
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 1:57
  • hm, interesting. I will check that and let you know tomorrow. Thanks
    – Grasper
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 2:10
  • today sunny day so I was able to see better and indeed you were right. The wire rolling from the pulley was twisted and stuck. I stepped on it and pushed down and got it to unwind. Now it is working fine but the question is what to do so the winding doesn't get stuck again. I attached the picture of the winding pulley. That's after I fixed it.
    – Grasper
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 18:51

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