Garage Doors Repair: Fixing Broken Springs

Fixing garage door problems is a professional’s job and you need trained experts to o them. However, if proper safety procedures and ensured and you have the right kind of latest tools, you can attempt to fix some of the garage doors problems yourself. This article talks of fixing broken garage door springs. Garage doors feature quite heavy kind of springs fixed under high tension in order to handle the huge garage doors. If you do not adopt the precautions necessary, this article would have misguided you more than helping you. Therefore, it is essential you take care of your safety if you are going to attempt fixing a broken spring.

First thing in fixing a garage door broken spring is to get to know which spring is broken. In most kinds of conventional garage doors you will see the broken spring connected to the long torsion tube. The most usual kind of garage doors have two springs: one fixed on the right of the centre and the other fixed to the left of the centre. In each of the springs you will find two cones attached. The purpose of these cones is to create torque by tightening the spring. One of the cones has a 9/16 bolt running through it and attached to the centre bracket. The function of the other cone is to wind and put pressure onto the spring.

If you are attempting to wind the spring, you can do the following. Place an 18 inch winding bar on one of the four winding holes. In the typical kind of head room garage door you will have to wind the rods towards the ceiling to put pressure on them. If you have a low head room, then the garage door might have a reverse torsion system that will require you to wind the springs in the opposite direction – towards the floor for instance. Talking of a regular kind of garage door system, the red cone spring will be found on the left side when you stand facing the garage door from inside while the black cone spring lies on the right. While winding the 7 foot high garage door spring, you must make 28 to 30 quarter turns and while winding 8 foot garage door springs you must turn 31 to 33 quarter turns. Once this is done, you can check whether you have done a good job. To do this, lift the door all the way up past the top. Ensure that there is still some tension perceived on the cables. If the tension is inadequate, then you may probably need to wind the spring up by one or two more quarter turns. 

Though changing the door spring is considered a professional’s job, you can still attempt to do it yourself with necessary tools and precautions. For fixing a new garage door spring, you will require a good ladder, a pair of safety glasses, 7/16 wrench, 9/16 wrench, pair of vise grips and a file if possible.

For safety measures, you need to ensure the garage door opener is unplugged. Also ensure the trolley in the garage door opener is released. The ideal way to release a garage door opener manually is to pull the red chord backwards either to the entrance or the back of the garage door. Since the manual release is spring loaded, you will find the spring extended while it is on manual mode. It is always advisable you take enough precautions and have someone else with you to warn you when something goes wrong.