How do I fix a shower door that drags or will not close?

Rollers, hinge pivots and a frame that has moved — how to tell which is causing a dragging shower door, and the adjustment that fixes each.

Difficulty: beginner
Time: 30 min
Read: 3 min
Safety: caution

Short answer

Sliding doors nearly always drag because a roller has seized, jumped its track, or dropped on its eccentric adjuster. Clean the track, then adjust the rollers up. Pivot doors that catch are usually a loose wall profile or worn pivot bushes rather than the door itself.

A shower door lives in a hot, wet, limescale-forming environment and is fitted to a frame that is rarely perfectly square. Both of those show up as dragging long before anything actually breaks.

Safety

Shower screens are toughened glass. It cannot be cut, drilled or ground, and when it fails it fails all at once into thousands of pieces. Never force a panel, never lever against the glass edge, and support a door fully before undoing its rollers or hinges.

What you'll need

A cross-head screwdriver and small Allen keys
Descaler and an old toothbrush
Silicone spray or a dry PTFE lubricant

Step by step

Clean the track before diagnosing.Scale, hair and soap build a ridge in the bottom track that lifts the door out of line. Descale it and pick the debris out with a toothbrush; on many doors that is the whole repair.
Lift the door slightly and feel the resistance.If the drag vanishes when you take the weight, the rollers or their adjusters are the problem. If it persists, the frame or the glass alignment is.
Check each roller turns.Spin every roller with a finger. A seized roller drags a flat spot into itself and gets worse. Clean and lubricate with silicone spray, and replace any that will not free off.
Find the eccentric adjuster.Most rollers mount on an off-centre screw. Slackening it and rotating the roller raises or lowers that corner of the door by a few millimetres — that is how a sliding door is levelled.
Adjust one corner at a time.Raise the dragging corner slightly, retighten, and test. Chasing both corners at once makes it impossible to tell what changed.
Check the wall profiles are still tight.The vertical channels are screwed into tile with plugs, and they work loose. A profile that has moved 3mm throws the whole door out. Retighten, and re-plug into fresh holes if the plugs are spinning.
Service pivot doors at the pivots.Pivot and bi-fold doors ride on nylon bushes at top and bottom. They wear oval and let the door drop. Bushes are cheap and usually available from the manufacturer.
Replace the bottom seal while it is apart.The clear plastic strip along the bottom hardens and curls, and a curled seal catches on the tray lip and reads as a dragging door.
Re-test with the enclosure wet.Some drag only appears when the seals swell slightly. Run the shower before deciding you are finished.

Tips

Photograph the roller assemblies before removing anything — they are handed and go back only one way.
Never use oil or grease in a shower track. It collects soap scum into a paste; silicone spray or dry PTFE is correct.
If a door has never closed properly since it was fitted, the tray is probably not level. That is a bigger job than adjustment.

Common mistakes

Forcing a stiff door to close — The load goes into the glass at the corner. Toughened glass tolerates almost no point loading at an edge, and failure is instant and total.
Adjusting the rollers before cleaning the track — You end up compensating for a ridge of limescale, so the door goes out of line properly once the scale finally breaks off.

If it doesn't work

Door drags on the tray at one end

Cause: That end's roller has dropped or seized — Fix: Clean and lubricate the roller, then raise it on its eccentric adjuster.

Door jumps out of the bottom track

Cause: Bottom guide worn or track full of debris — Fix: Clean the track and replace the guide; check the door is not riding too high.

Gap opens at the top when closed

Cause: Wall profile loose or enclosure out of square — Fix: Retighten the profile fixings into sound plugs and re-level the door.

Pivot door sags and catches

Cause: Worn nylon pivot bushes — Fix: Replace the bushes; they are a low-cost manufacturer part.

Questions people ask

Can I take the door off to clean the track?

Usually yes — most sliding doors lift out once the rollers are retracted or the top track's stop is removed. Have someone help take the weight, and lay the glass flat on a towel rather than standing it on an edge.

My door is fine when dry and drags when wet. Why?

Wet seals swell and grip, and a wet tray flexes slightly under your weight. Both are normal; a door adjusted with a millimetre of clearance rather than none will cope.