Garage Door Rollers

Garage Door Rollers – Everything You Need to Know

Quality garage door rollers keep your door working smoothly and quietly by reducing friction and dragging. Residential garage door rollers are two inches in diameter. Four-inch stems are used for most garage doors, but if your door is extremely heavy and your roller stem goes through two hinges on each side of the door, you may need a seven-inch stem to support the extra weight.

Rollers with worn out bearings will drag in the track, causing excessive wear and tear on your garage door opener and added strain on your garage door panels that can result in cracks. The first and most obvious sign of a bad or worn roller is noise. Loose ball bearings can cause a clicking noise. Other signs of wear include the garage door opener straining as the door moves up and down, the garage door panels flexing when in operation, and difficulty opening the door manually.

Cheap Garage Door Rollers Options

Black Nylon Rollers: These factory rollers usually come with a garage door. They’re relatively soft and have no ball bearings. They only support about 50 pounds per roller and are rated for just 10,000 cycles.
Black nylon rollers may work properly at first, but they soon begin to slide and drag in the track because they have no ball bearings to keep them rolling smoothly. This puts added strain on your garage door and opener. As these rollers lose their diameter, they can pop out of the track, causing serious damage to other components of your garage door and creating a very dangerous situation for anyone or anything in your garage.

Steel Roller: Steel rollers usually have only an 8 or 10 ball bearing. They’re noisy almost from the beginning and get even noisier because the metal roller is in constant contact with the metal track, resulting in friction and causing exposed ball bearings to wear down quickly. The noise you hear is similar to a train on train tracks. Lubrication helps, but lubricating a non-sealed steel roller attracts dirt and grit into the bearing, which shortens the life of the roller.

Garage Door Rollers Recommended by DIY-Garage-Door-Parts
Two-inch Nylon-coated Roller with 11 Ball Bearings. With a durable white nylon tire, bulged shoulder and zinc-plated stem, these rollers are a significant upgrade from the black nylon rollers that come standard with most garage doors.

These rollers have a harder nylon and wider diameter, virtually eliminating any side-to-side play that causes rattling. This increases the life of your garage door by taking stress off the top panel where the opener pushes and pulls. The 11 ball bearings allow for smooth and quite operation. Because this roller is sealed, it requires no lubrication, which keeps dirt and grit out.

Two-inch Nylon-coated Roller with 13 Ball Bearings. This roller is the real deal, with a rated weight capacity of 125 pounds per roller and a 25,000 cycle rating. Made from the same materials as the 11 ball bearing version, this roller is packed with grease and the 13 ball bearings are sealed off from the outside environment, keeping out dirt and grit for an extremely long garage door life.

Watch our how-to videos to learn more about lubricating and replacing your garage door rollers. Both videos illustrate the major difference that rollers can make in the performance of your garage door. Call us at 1-866-813-7899 if you have any questions.