Garage Door Springs-DoubleR

DoubleR, In another post you made mention of changing the springs on a garage door-said it was easy. Can you give me a quick lesson in doing it. I just noticed that one of my 15 year old springs is broken. Should I do both while I have it apart? Thanks

Do both at the same time that way you get a balanced opening of the door. As for being easy it depends on the type of spring you have. If yours are the wind up type on a bar those are neither easy or safe for a person who doesn't know what there doing to work on. Those type I have seen throw a bar right through a wall. Yep worked on them at Tracker Marine when I was a maintenance man there.

I have done both but I have the overhead type single spring. I used two pieces of re-rod cut to about twelve inches long. You should have a tenson device on the end of the spring which you need to loosen the bolts on it and use the re-rod pcs in the holes on the device a hold it in place and carefully unwind the device and take the tenson off of the spring. BE CAREFULL because it will suddenly unwind if you let it go. Although if the spring is broke there will be no tenson on it. After you in stall the new spring you have to wind the spring back up again. My spring takes about 8 1/2 turns to get the proper tenson on the new spring. Be sure to block the door from coming up as you do it. Also put a clamp or vice grips on the rod that the spring is mounted on to keep it from turning as you wind the spring up. Again,Please be carefull as you wind or unwind that spring. I think I googled it the first time I did it a few years back. They can probably give you better instructions on how to do it. Its really not that hard as long as your carefull and don't let one of them rods loose as your doing it. Home Depot won't even sell you a spring because of the danger involved and lieability. The other type you have two springs, one on each side of the track up above and you just adjust the tenson on the cables that the spring is mounted to. Hope I've helped.

This might help Rick
Door springs

It is a lot easier to wind them with the door up than down. Just wind a turn or two then put it down to see if it is enough or not. It will wind it as the door goes down.

BE CAREFUL!! Saw a contractor take one loose, slapped half his face and head off, no eye on one side half crazy now!!

With torsion springs, use a piece of chalk to make a horizontal line on the springs before you start winding. Makes it much easier to keep track of the turns.

Yep one slip and the rod becomes a bullet. The wall I talked about was a cement block wall and the bar went in one side and out the other. It did stop in the wall but just think if it had been a person instead of a cement block wall that got hit

as a tempary fix i have used a cable cuamp to hohd the break togeather ah rewound thatspring
as tight as the outher one with no problems remberdit about 2 years later when the outher one broke also changed them both . old art