Garage Door Hinge

A garage door hinge is a stamped steel bracket that performs two jobs simultaneously: it bolts across the joint between two adjacent door sections to hold them together, and it carries a stem roller that rides inside the track to guide the door. As the door travels, the hinge allows the sections to flex relative to each other through the curved section of track while keeping the panel gap controlled.

Hinges are numbered by their position on the door. Number-1 hinges go between the bottom and second sections; number-2 between the second and third sections; and so on up to number-4 or number-5 on tall doors. The numbering reflects the increasing offset needed for the roller stem to stay centered in the track as the hinge moves higher up the door's arc of travel. Using the wrong number hinge in a position causes the roller to run off-center and bind or jump the track.

The middle hinges (between sections but not at the ends) carry only the inter-section load. The end hinges at the bottom corners of each section also carry the top fixture or the corner roller bracket and therefore bear higher loads. Heavy-duty hinges with thicker gauge steel and larger rollers are available for commercial applications and high-cycle residential doors.

Worn hinges allow the roller to wobble in its stem, which causes the door to squeak, bounce, and eventually bind in the track. Lubrication prolongs hinge life, but a hinge with a cracked body or wallowed-out roller hole should be replaced before it allows the door to jump the track.