Do it Yourself Garage Door Repair: Replacing the Broken Torsion Spring

Your first decision is whether to repair the springs yourself or call the repairman?

If you choose to do it yourself this article will hopefully provide some insight into what is involved. Older larger garage doors operate under this torsion spring system. If you decide to leave this repair job to the professional it's probably a good idea. Doing this repair yourself can result in major headaches, additional costs as well as be a major safety concern.

My decision to do my own repairs was made more by my location and the inability to find a local repair company or individual...

A Typical Situation

My own issue was a 16 ft wide by 7 ft high heavy wooden door. The left spring on the garage door broke suddenly. This caused a major problem immediately as the cables jumped their pulleys and the door partial jumped its rail. The door jammed up and bent the rails.

Ordering the New Spring(s)

The first thing you need to do is find a replacement spring. The recommendation is to replace both springs at the same time. The life cycle of the unbroken one is probably past its prime unless you just built the garage.

After checking a few local hardware stores it was obvious the springs in stock were too small and built for smaller and lighter doors. The next thing I did was check the Internet and still had little luck finding advertised prices. Finally I sent an e-mail to a company that had worked on our doors at work but with a different setup.

They asked me to take the following measurements to help them with sizing: the total length of both pieces of broken spring (not the unbroken one still under torsion), inside diameter of a spring and the length of 20 coils of the broken spring. An important note here is you may also want the weight of your door if you think the original springs were improper in the first place.

Checking for Other Problems.

Check the current conditions of the cables and pulleys. I recommend changing the cables if they are beginning to look worn or frayed. In addition check the support bar over, check for indentations and burrs. Removing these problems now will assist in putting everything back together properly later.