Gettysburg

it's could be spring on your garage door failing.

Late Monday night I heard a horrific crashing sound which appeared to come from our garage attic space. After poking around for 20 min, and not finding anything that could have caused the noise, I just assumed the noise must have occurred outside the house(maybe from the neighbor's).

Last night, my wife tells me that one of the garage door openers isn't working. Turns out garage door opener was working fine. The torsion spring; which provides the force required to easily lift/lower a 600+lb. wooden garage door had snapped. I pretty sure this was the source of the noise I heard Monday night.

Has anybody ever had this happen? I plan replace the spring myself. Although while looking for a replacement spring on the web, I've come across conflicting views as to whether or not a DIY'er should attempt this repair (him/her)self.

tpierce

or doors opened an closed frequently. Just to let you know, everything i've ever read about doing this, states it is def not a DIY project. I've seen the door guys do it a few times at the dealer i used to work at to the big over head door there. If you slip while tightening the spring, the bar you are holding car do some serious damage to you and whatever is around you.

JimV

the spring is very long and has a lot of tension. Has to hold up a pretty wide and heavy door. It is difficult to stretch the spring yourself back to the hookup point. I wouldnt do it without a lot of research first and the right tools.

Gettysburg

The torsion spring twists around a shaft. One end of the spring is clamped to the shaft while the other end is secured to fixed point(garage door frame). At both ends of the shaft are spools which roll&unroll steel cables which actually lower/raise the door. So you actually use bars to twist the spring/shaft

andrec

I have the same set up as you. Pay a professional. Better to be safe than sorry.

JScottC

You need the right tools, and you need to know how much to wind the spring. There's an awful lot of torque there, and so a little danger too, I think.

Gettysburg

Information on the number of turns needed to wind the springs for a particular door height is readily available.

I don't mean to trivialize the risk, but I think many of the power tools we use without a second thought are just as(if not more) dangerous. In any event, I'll probably call around to a few places see what they'll charge to install.

customfab

a friend of mine who is an emt had a call about an older man trying to replace his torsion spring solo. got caught up in the spring and pined against the celling of the garage. they had to call the garage door company to remove the body.

oh and my bad *** garage opener worked with out a spring for 3 months before i finally got around to having the spring replaced. old school genie screw drive FTMFW

customfab

including a new spring