How can I tell if a garage door hinge is broken?

What hinges actually do

Hinges hold your door's sections together and let them pivot as the door rounds the curve from vertical to horizontal. The end hinges do a second job: they carry the roller that holds that side of the door in the track. So a failing end hinge is not only a joint problem, it is a tracking problem, and that is why they are worth inspecting more carefully than the intermediate ones.

They are also numbered — 1, 2, 3 and up — and the numbers are not decorative. Each number is a different offset, matched to its position in the stack. Putting a #2 where a #3 belongs makes the door bind. We explain the system in what the numbers on garage door hinges mean.

The visual inspection

• Cracks radiating from the pin. The pin area carries the pivot load and cracks there grow quickly.
• An oval pin hole. Round when new. Once it wears oval the section shifts under load, which you hear as a knock and see as a widening joint gap.
• Torn metal at the screws. The hinge is pulling out of the section. Urgent — this is how sections separate.
• Rust streaks from the joint. Common on the bottom two sections here, where road salt and standing water do their work.
• A bent leaf. Almost always the aftermath of an impact or a door that has been off track.

The sounds that give it away

A bad hinge is rhythmic. It makes its noise at the same point in travel every single cycle, as that section rounds the curve. Dry hinges chirp and stop after lubrication; worn ones knock and keep knocking no matter what you spray on them. If the noise survives a proper lubrication with a door-rated product, you are past maintenance and into replacement.

Do not confuse this with the continuous squeal of dry rollers, which tracks the whole motion rather than pulsing at one spot. The difference is laid out in our guide to squealing and screeching doors.

What is safe to do yourself

Intermediate hinges — the ones in the middle of the door, not at the ends — are within reach for a careful homeowner with the door fully open and secured, because they carry no cable tension. End hinges are a different matter on the bottom section: that bracket is attached to the lift cable under full spring tension, and it is the piece of hardware that injures people who treat it casually.

The other thing worth knowing is that hinges rarely fail alone. A door that has eaten one hinge is usually out of alignment, unbalanced, or being cycled hard, and the next hinge is queued up behind it. Our technicians replace the hardware and find the reason it failed, which is the part that keeps it from repeating.