Sliding Glass Door Coming Out Of Track Video
Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates how to replace some wheels that are not rolling right on a patio sliding glass door that is coming out of it’s track and not rolling right.
All right, here goes. We’re replacing the wheels on a patio sliding glass door that’s not working too well. Up top, you can see the door is coming out at certain points. See that? That’s not too good. I’ve got to replace the wheels here and get these adjusted out. What I’ve got are these nylon wheels that roll a lot easier. I’ll show you how these roll. Now it’s pushing it, so it’ll give you a difference here.
Sometimes, you may need to lower the wheels a little bit. On this one, I think I’ll be able to lift it straight out. I’m just going to lift on both sides. I’m going to lift the door out of its track and walk it. Now, it’s free.
I’m going to pull this down. In this unit, the carpet’s going to get cleaned, so I’m not too worried about the carpet, but it’s a good idea to throw a towel down or something, if that’s not the case especially if there’s any grease in the track, or if you’ve tried to lube it first, and that didn’t work. So you want to put a towel down, so the grease doesn’t get all over your carpet.
Now here goes. We’re placing the wheels. On this side, we’re going to remove this secondary foot pin here. OK. See inside here, the screws. And it’s nice, because this back Phillips screws actually can pass as a lock too, to lock the wheel in place.
Each setup’s a little bit different. This particular one has a groove back here. What we can do is insert our screwdriver and then just pop it out like so. And this one gets bent into its little tractor. On these, I find that pre-setting the wheel usually works out good for me. Again, every setup’s a little bit different, but this lowers or raises the wheel. So loosening will lower it, and tightening it will raise it.
So on this side, insert it like so, and then bend the wheel into place like this, and get it well tapped. And now, we can reinsert the secondary foot pin here and screw. And this will lock our wheel into place. Again, take care with these old wheels, because there’s usually a lot of grease on them. You don’t want to get that into your carpet. OK. There’s one wheel.
Now, for our second wheel, this one just links into place right here. It’s a little bit more straightforward. But again, if I don’t tighten this screw up, it’s going to lower the wheel down that low, and that’s pretty low, so I find that usually tightening these down about right here…
We can adjust this once it’s in place, but it’s a lot easier to adjust it before we get it up. That’s in theory, because sometimes it can make putting the door back in a lot harder. But I got a feeling this one will work out pretty good this way. So I’ll discard my old wheels.
Now, we’re ready to put the door back up. When I lift, I’m going to insert the top portion into the top portion of the track. OK. Now, it’s just a matter of lifting and walking it in. You’ll see that the wheel side is dropping into the track. And you can see how much more easily it is sliding when I push it back.
Up top here, you want to make sure that at no point is the door able to come out. In this one, it is. It’s a little too close, and that can allow the door to fall. So what we’re going to have to do is adjust the wheels up a bit higher. The other thing we want to look for is to make sure that we’re able to latch it. OK. And this one is, but again, we do need to raise this front wheel out. To raise these up, we can insert a screwdriver into the bottom cavity, and that’s where it lines up with the setscrew.
Now, the problem is, most screwdrivers won’t reach far enough to get in there. So my 6-in-1’s a bit short. We can either get a longer screwdriver, or I can take the head off of my screwdriver and insert that until it lines up, and then just gently get my 6-in-1 to grab the edge here, which doesn’t always work out that well. Sometimes, it does. Sometimes, it’s a little stubborn.
And for ease of lifting this, of getting this to raise up, what you want to do is lift your patio door and just set it on the edge. Now, be careful and watch your fingers. Don’t get your fingers caught in there or anything, but you lift it up and set it on the edge. This one’s going to be stubborn on me. And hold it taut. See, I’m holding it taut with my hand here, so it doesn’t fall back down in there. And then, you should be able to go ahead and tighten it up here, because it’s significantly easier.
Now, this is going to change the pivot of the door, and most likely, is going to change how the lock lines up, but it’s necessary to keep the door from coming out there. So we’re just checking up top to make sure everything is good. And it is good there. And then now, check our latch to make sure this latch is nice and easy. And it is, so we’re good there.
Anyway, here’s the pivot, and everything lines up good. And again, here’s the difference in the door when pushing it open. It just rolls so much easier. Yes, I just got rid of somebody’s free exercise program, but I don’t think they wanted it anyway, so we’re good to go here. Nice new patio wheels. Next, we got to fix the screen.