Lubrication!!!

I owe a special shout out to Pedro's Extra Dry Chain Lube!

Earlier this week my wife called me to tell me that her garage door was not closing all of the way down and was stuck about 2 feet off of the ground.  Someone could break into the house.  I needed to go fix it.

It just so happened to occur on the coldest day of the year thus far.  The weather woman said that it would be 15 degrees over night.

I went into the garage with my jacket on to take a look at the door.  It was freezing in the garage because the temperature was below freezing out side.  My hands were about to fall off.   I opened and closed the door several times and indeed it got stuck in different places on the way down.

By this time I was thinking up several schemes to get past this problem.

• I am not going to pay "Overhead Doors Inc" $200 to come out here for a service call.  Any problem with the door is right in front of my eyes for me to fix. 
• "That woman is just going to have to deal with this.  It is too cold out here.  She is just going to have to park her car outside for now."

I looked at every possible nut & bolt, cable and bracket there was.  No problem was evident. 

The movement of the door was rattling all of the brackets and the pulleys were squeaking.

I got on the Internet and did a search on "Garage Door Not Closing".

I found a page that talked about a guy who had the same problem and he used "Lithium lubricant" but that did not help.   A second guy came along and told him to wipe the Lithium off and use a clear lubricant like "Liquid Wrench".

I searched through my storage shelves for one of the many bottles of "Liquid Wrench" that I know I had.  I found a rusty pair of pliers that I used "Liquid Wrench" on about 4 months ago.  I could not find the stupid bottle though.

Then I looked in another closest and found a bottle of lubricant for my bicycle chain.  It was not an exact match but the only other option was to wait until the Home Depot opened and drive up there.

I sprayed the chain lube on all of the rollers from the door and the guide rail.
On the first run - the door still got stuck.  "Damn It!!   $200 to Overhead Door Inc".
Then I tried it again and it worked.
I noticed that the pulley that holds the tension spring was still squeaking and I gave it a shot.

My wife came home and the door opened and closed with no problems.

Yesterday as I opened the door it rolled up and down like it was riding on a sheet of ice.
No more shaking, rattling and squeaking.

After 13 years of constant operation all that was needed was a LUBE JOB.

$200 = a new Xbox 360