What does a garage door hinge do? Garage doors are made of panels.You have two options with garage door hinges:

See the article 'Overhead Garage Door Repair' if this is not your problem.

Most residential doors have four panels that are twenty one inches high. To allow the panels to move up and overhead they are connected together with hinges. As the door raises and goes around the bend in the track the hinges hold the panels together.

The hinges on the side of the door provide and additional service. They have a sleeve in them where the garage door rollers go. The hinges are made of metal and can get rusty or even break.

Hinges may start to stick and make noise. This is a fairly simple problem to take care of. Check out the rest of the article for information on what you can do.

Is this something you can do? Yes it is, it's pretty easy.

Garage Door Hinges - Information

This is an easy job for a service man. The hinges should cost less than $5 each. A $50 service call plus parts would be the minimum. The danger is that the repairman may take the opportunity to try and sell you a new door. They can be quite convincing when telling you about the woes of your current door. A new door could run into the thousands of dollars. Do you really hate your current door? No, well then just fix it yourself.

Repairing or replacing door hinges is not hard at all.

For and explanation of the terms in this section, see 'How to Use This Site'.

Lubricating the hinges is very easy. For squeaking or sticking hinges this should solve the problem.

Not a whole lot, unless you decide to take all of the hinges off at the same time and your garage door falls apart. Deal with them one at a time and you should not have any trouble.

Troubleshooting Garage Door Hinge Problems

There are only two things to address. The first is lubrication. There is not a lot that can go wrong with a hinge and many times a little oil will fix it. See Step One. The second issue would be replacing a broken, seized or rusted hinge. The new door hinges are less than five dollars each. Replacing one is about a ten minute job. See Step Two for the guidelines

One of the main problems you will have with hinges on a garage door is the lubrication. Rusty or binding hinges can be fixed with a little oil or grease. You can review 'Lubricating Garage Door Hinges' by following this link.

When the hinges are too far gone the only recourse will be to replace them. Garage door hinges are fairly common and not too expensive. The article 'Replacing Garage Door Hinges' discusses what you need to do to make this repair.

Summary

So what did you get into? Were you able to oil them and get them working? Or were they too far gone? 

Hopefully you were able to take care of your problem with a little oil. Worst case, you had to replace one or more of the hinges. They were not that expensive and not that hard to find. I know it was not a hard job. In the future you will be prepared to repair other garage door hinges. Well done!