About ten years ago our NEW, no really new, not new to us, house garage door just stopped working. To my shock, and dismay, I couldn’t open the door! My parents house didn’t have a garage door, it was open front and back. With no experience I was very surprised that the two modest looking springs at the center of the garage opening just above the garage door did a lot of work.
I didn’t know who to call, so I looked on the Internet. I’m sure I put “Katy, TX” in the search.
I found someone, called them. A very tall, great for garage door spring work, man showed up and for $120 he could fix my door.
I watch him carefully and was surprised at how quickly and easily it was to fix this issue.
Fast forward to present day and I found this about a week ago…
I was relieved to find that the garage door opener was still able to open and close the two car garage door, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the option to wait for a pair of replacement springs. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The very friendly gentleman that had fixed my broken spring(s) before had cleverly left his business card stapled to my wall just above the garaged door opener switch!
I gave him a call! I told him I had a broken torsion spring. He asked a couple of questions, again very friendly, and told me that they were selling a replacement spring that had many more cycles (door opening and closing count) that the standard springs. The {nn,nnnn) cycle spring replacement would be $250 and and even better spring set would be $350. Holy hell! I figured it would be more expensive, maybe $160 now, well that’s what I was hoping for.
I thanked this very nice man for the information and hung up the phone. I headed over to youtube to see what information I could find about replacing these springs myself. Wow! There is a lot of information out there, and apparently quite a bit of YOU CAN DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH REPLACING YOUR OWN GARAGE DOOR SPRINGS!
I watched this video with excellent information and bad audio…
After seeing this I jumped over to Amazon.
Yep! $55 plus $4.68 shipping.
I needed to figure out what size springs I needed so I watched this video…
Springs came in this past Thursday. Garage door was still going up and down so I got around to replacing them tonight. I’m sure it took me less than an hour and keep in mind it was my first time.
The only surprise was someone had tightened the bolts down on the torsion springs so tight that it dented the pipe and deformed it. Making it impossible to remove the old springs. A mini sledge and less than a couple of minutes whacking the pipe got it back in shape to slide the springs off.
I spend an extra $11 for quick shipping. These springs were not available for Prime, so I spent a total of $71. I used a step stool, a cresent wrench (the bolts they use have 4 sides and I couldn’t find a hex socket to fit them all). So this job would even be quicker with the right socket. Oh! The springs came with the winding rods!
I can’t express how simple this is. The only danger I can think of is the spring breaking while your tightening it or loosing it, and if that happened the spring would stay on the rod. Still I think it’s a good idea to wear eye protection while doing this job.
$250 minus $71 = $179. Keep in mind these are your standard five to seven year springs, not those uber fancy springs the door doctor was going to sell me, but for $179 I can replace the springs 3.25 times! That would be a conservative 15 years, and perhaps 21 years!
I did not feel I was in danger at ANY time. Just be sure and follow the steps from the video I have embedded here in their proper order. Winding the springs got a little tough as I was getting to 31 quarter turns. Oh and it was hot in the garage with the door closed. 😛