I have a 20-30 year old 16x7, 24 ga steel roll-up that needs serious help. A previous resident disconnected the limit switches (which turn off the opener when the dorr is completely open/closed) and pretty much destroyed the engage/disengage mechanism (screw lift Genie), so the problem isn’t new.
I didn’t start its destruction, just finished it
Anyway, I have no money, so the craiglist offers of NEW GARAGE DOOR WITH OPENER - $600! will have ot wait.
I am handy, and spent yesterday disassembling and re-assembling it, so I know how it goes together.
First - any links ot practical instructions for a machine which takes a full minuter just to load google news? No flash, no PDF, and no working printer.
The biggie is how to load the spring - it uses a cable attached to the lower corner of the bottom panel to load a rod with a heavy steel coil spring in the center.
My guess is that you are supposed to get the door completely raised, then wrap the cable around the their pulleys until there is just enough to connect to the door. Then, I’m guessing, just closing the door pre-loads the spring.
Right or wrong?
If wrong, then how?
Next, the badly deformed panels - can I pop-rivet steel angle to the tops of the panels to straighten them (I have no known way to straighen the tongue/groove joints on the panels - any ideas, or does it matter beyond appearance?)
The trackes are seriously bent and twisted - the rollers are close to disengaging even f the thing tracks straight and level. Can they be (cheaply replaced, or do I have to remove and straighten them?
Please help - the only way I can open and close the garage is to disassemble/re-assemble the door, and I’m crippled. The pain today was absolutely incredible, and I really don’t need the pain invloved.
Yes, there is a stiffene along the top panel - at least they got that much right.
Garage door torsion springs can maim or kill you if you mis-handle them. Extension springs (usually found on one-piece tilt-up doors) are bad enough, but setting torsion springs requires specific knowledge, tools and strength that you probably don’t have.
This really is something that the average homeowner needs to use the checkbook tool for.
there is no sense in replacing the opener or any other work until you get the tracks and rollers working well. tracks can be straightened and rollers replaced.
the springs need to have more tension than zero at the top. torsion springs are dangerous and need skill to adjust.
But I don’t LIKE that answer - anybody want to try again?
It looks like one end of the spring is connected to a head with both a setscrew to hold it to the rod, and holes and lugs for some kind kind of toll to attach and turn it. I have a 1/2 tougue wrench which gets up to 150 ft-lbs - could it be used to measue the torsional load?
I am familiar with mechanics, and pretty much fearless - the parts are filthy, but the rod, spring, etc are sloid, and their mounts are solid.
How many ft-lbs of pre-load does it need, and how is it supposed to be applied?
thanks again
A lot? The one time my garage door spring sprung/un-wound, it made a god-awful noise and reverberated for a long time - so there was a lot of tension there. There needs to be enough power in the spring to basically lift the door, right? If it’s a steel door, it’s probably over a hundred pounds easily - my original was solid wood (or something similar), and without the spring assist, I couldn’t budge it.
The garage door guy had two or three 3+ foot steel rods he put in the winding mechanism and hauled on - he was a pretty big guy and at the end looked to be using his body weight to pull the rods down.
Seconded - particularly with a spring that hasn’t been regularly tensioned and released - it is quite likely that it will shatter (with sharp pieces going into body parts you’d rather have intact) if you try to tension it.
Thanks for the link - it turns out that that was one of the documents the nice lady at HD printed for me (I have no functioning printer).
For those quaintly concened re. my health:
I have osteoarthritis (a very nasty, crippling incurable, progressive deterioration of the joints)
AND
Stage 5 Chronic Kidney Disease (there is a stage 4; there is no stage 6)
It’s not like I have a whole lot to lose at this point
I am terribly sorry to hear of your kidney disease. I know somebody entering stage five and it breaks my heart. You seem positive and well adjusted to it and you have my admiration and respect.
The spring is serious business, but straightening tracks and mending bent panels may go a long way. Would it work easily enough under manual power? Is there a cog for a manual chain on the axle, or a pull rope and release on the motor’s drive chain? A bent wheel, track or other part that could be replaced?
I have limited experience with garage doors. Part of my experience, though, is with the owner of an apartment building who was determined to save money on a damaged garage door. She kept having her general-purpose handyman try to straighten tracks and panels that were bent, but he never could perfectly straighten things out. The end result: repeated breakages and constant repairs for months… until she finally replaced the whole thing. Had she simply replaced parts using professional labor from the beginning, she could have at least saved the motor.
My take home lesson from that is that you’re going to pay to have it done right. Might as well do that earlier rather than later.
Thank you.
No, there is no provision for any rope or chain - when the spring was loaded, I could easily lift the door manually. If you are talking about an opener drive - there is one, but it is pretty much destroyed and non-functional (the bracket on the door to which the opener’s bar attaches has pulled out of one of its screws, the bracket which engages the screw drive is bent - the motor still turns the screw, and it may be salvageable if I can get the door to open straight - the damage was caused by one side wanting to raise, while the other did not - the track on one side was horribly bent and twisted, along with its mounting brackets.
I spent the day hammering this, pop-riveting that, and have it to the point that it track reasonably straight (if I leave the top panel disconnected from the rest, I can lift the top panel manually, and then budge the lower panels - I have almost finished attaching the top panel, after which it will be time ot attach the cables and torque the spring - if I use 30" rods for winding it, a 36" rod will engage one of the ceiling joists and hold the tension while I tighten the set screw.
And, while I really do appreciate the concern for my safety:
I’m a grown-up who has done MUCH more dangerous things, and any more “you’re going to kill yourself!” comments are simply redundant and, at this point, not appreciated.
If you want to help, some ideas as to how many revolutions of the spring will be needed (16x7 24 ga steel, about 300-400 lbs on a single torsion spring) would be greatly appreciated. Alternately, are there any signs the door will give that say “enough!”? I’m guessing that, if it starts to lift all by itself, I should back off a bit…
FWIW:
When I released the bottom roller plate (the one with the cable) it, of course, zipped right up - but it did not do so with enough force to mar the wood or the door as it went by. We are not talking about terribly powerful forces here, and the twisting is done by pushing a lever down - with a long enough lever, the force becomes minimal. If, every 1/2 turn, one uses a lever which can be engaged in the building structure (a 2x6, for those still reading) to hold it in position, the chances of the rod flinging across the room with great force are greatly reduced. I promise to take my damned sweet time on this.
p.s. - I emailed a local garage door company asking for an estimate to come by and twist the spring. They didn’t answer.
Ok. It just isn’t intuitively obvious that torsion springs are dangerous, which leads to a “How hard can it be?” train of thought, which can lead to injury.
If you know the specs of the spring (unlikely in this case) and the weight of the door, the standard method is to draw a chalk or grease pencil line across the un-tensioned spring, and then wind it, counting the number of spiral stripes you can see. That’s another reason to get a new spring - it won’t be brittle and you will know what it is rated for.
I believe the twisting is done by pushing up on the rod, not down. That means a rod will be held in position by rotating against the door when you tighten the clamping bolt. Check out this link, especially Fig TOR-5:
You are correct - it does need to be pushed up, not down. I have the linked article printed out and have read it - no excuse for the foul-up.
I don’t want to think about letting a loaded rod contact anything as flimsy as this door - will still try to engage the 2x6 joist.
Just checked the set screws (there are two) - I don’t know their fractional sizes, but a standard box/open-ended/combo wrench for that size would be pretty short. I found that a 13mm socket fits perfectly - I have 13mm in both 1/4" and 1/2" drive sockets - the 1/4" for a quick snugging, then the 1/2" on the end of an 18" torque wrench should hold it pretty well…
yea, I know - I’m going to kill myself.
I was actually told (on a foodie site) that I would kill myself trying to use a pressure cooker - now there’s a dangerous tool - it develops, IIRC, a whole 15 psi…
It is dangerous, and I have done it. Make sure your rods are bottomed out in the holes. When I did it, it was to replace a broken cable. I just used trial and error to set the tension…first try needed a little more, so I gave it another half turn. Keep at least one rod engaged all the time. Take care on your ladder.
Laying a towel over the spring while you tension it might slow any possible shrapnel.
Spring constants for steel are determined by mechanical dimensions only. If you buy a replacement with the same dimensions, it will have the same rating.
I just did a dry run using two (huge) screwdrivers for rods (one is about 15", the other about 18" long - the little one will bottom out, the large one won’t, so I limited myself to a single turn (the WD-40 left a dry streak, so I have a line along it). I’m still breathing - maybe tomorrow it’ll kill myself.
I wanted to run a safety cable through it, but can’t find any way to get a cable into it.
At a hardware store you can buy 1/2" steel rod, thats what I used.
On a torsion spring the axle serves the purpose of the safety cable that is used in an extension spring. It will contain any pieces longer than one turn, shorter pieces might get loose, but they would get loose from a cable as well.
