Patio door opening too small - need to find a quarter inch
I have an old Andersen sliding patio door that I assume to be original to our 40+ year old house that has been tough to open and close since we bought it a few years ago. I had put off replacing the rollers for too long, but finally did it with OEM hardware and was surprised to find that it made no difference. Turns out that the clearance for the door was so small that it was actually dragging on both the top and the bottom, essentially not putting any weight on the rollers at all and just using them as a guide in the bottom track. Getting the door in there at all took quite a bit of finesse. The top framing looks like its sagging about a quarter inch in the middle, so that's where the friction is at the top. As you can see in the pictures, there is no room to adjust the door up to get any clearance. Any creative ideas on how I can eek out another quarter inch somewhere to relieve that friction without fully tearing everything apart? My current bad ideas: Cut a shallow channel in the bottom of the door with a circular saw so it can drop down slightly to eliminate the friction on the top, and have the wheels take the weight? Maybe gain a 16th before the guard on the outside of the door hits the track too. Shave the fins on the outer edges of the top of the door down? Maybe gain a 16th. Both Either of these remove the plastic and expose the wooden core of the door, which makes weather protection and friction worse. Any better ideas, beyond cursing whoever rammed this thing in here without fixing the header 40 years ago? submitted by /u/t_12345 [link] [comments]
| | I have an old Andersen sliding patio door that I assume to be original to our 40+ year old house that has been tough to open and close since we bought it a few years ago. I had put off replacing the rollers for too long, but finally did it with OEM hardware and was surprised to find that it made no difference. Turns out that the clearance for the door was so small that it was actually dragging on both the top and the bottom, essentially not putting any weight on the rollers at all and just using them as a guide in the bottom track. Getting the door in there at all took quite a bit of finesse. The top framing looks like its sagging about a quarter inch in the middle, so that's where the friction is at the top. As you can see in the pictures, there is no room to adjust the door up to get any clearance. Any creative ideas on how I can eek out another quarter inch somewhere to relieve that friction without fully tearing everything apart? My current bad ideas:
Either of these remove the plastic and expose the wooden core of the door, which makes weather protection and friction worse. Any better ideas, beyond cursing whoever rammed this thing in here without fixing the header 40 years ago? [link] [comments] |
