Our stupid garage door spring sprung and broke.
We can’t open the garage door with a crowbar, let alone the two of us trying to lift it.
Luckily, it is the car we seldom use and I was out with the other car when my SO found this out.
So - the car is being held hostage in the garage.
Fixing it looks like it is going to cost about $250 - $500, depending upon finding an honest, good repair service…crap.
And looking online, I don’t think I want to try doing this myself.
Do you have an electric opener where the spring is on a horizontal roll or is it the pivot and lever system with the two coil springs, one on each side?
One, big-ass spring on a horizontal roll that made a very loud noise as it ripped apart. Not only that, but the force of it yanked out the three bolts holding the door opener onto the door.
If you have a door opener then disconnect it. All garage door openers have a quick disconnect just for this reason and is a pull rope located along the track of the garage door opener. If the electric unit is FUBAR’d then it’s only attached by a few nuts and bolts. Take it down or re-secure it.
The rope thing won’t work if the spring is broken…that’s just for power failures.
Do NOT attempt to replace the spring by yourself. Some jobs really require a professional.
Yes and no. If the spring is broken it will be much harder to lift the door. But 2 or 3people should be able to do it once the door is disengaged from the lifting mechanism.
Yes Yes YES ! on the messing with the spring thing. As a dyed in the wool DIYer, there are very few things I am not afraid of trying to fix or mess with myself. I also have little fear of doing things other people consider downright dangerous. I messed with one of the garage door springs once a couple years ago. I will never do it again, thank you very much.
No, the rope disconnects the door from the opener which holds it in place. The door can then be opened without the assistance of the spring. It will be heavy but it will open. What may have happened is that the cables are binding.
yes, Unless you know what you are doing these are dangerous mechanisms to fool with.
If you do attempt to open the door while the spring is broken then you really MUST have something solid to slide under the path of the door. This is because without the spring if you lose your grip on the door it may come slamming down with extreme force - i.e. injury, maiming, death, etc. Put a solid chair or something in the path (actually two, one on each side) so the worst that can happen is it knocks someone down and causes bruises, rather than removing body parts.
Or hire some professionals.
Repairing the doorframe, anchors, and replacing the springs will not be fun.
Which is exactly why restoring it to a similar condition is something I personally would leave to a workman experienced with the operation. I’m a DIY’er too but the loading of springs to lethal tolerances is well the other side of where my line has been drawn.
When I went to adjust our spring, because we had installed a new heavier door, the instructions had all sorts of dire warnings about people getting seriously hurt or KILLED messing with the door spring. I figured it was like all those other warnings they plaster over any tool/commercial product these days. Yeah, any idiot can hurt or kill themselves using a butter knife if they try hard enough.
Even still I was very cautious when I started to do it and I had thought about it on and off for a few days before actually doing it, trying to imagine any possible hidden dangers.
Well, once I got started it was pretty damn obvious why it could be so dangerous. After about an hour of dicking with it I had it “good enough”. It felt like the DIY equivalent of trying to hold a very heavy weight over a bomb with one hand while trying to defuse it with the other. One slip and bam!
The SO complains every now and then that it still probably isnt adjusted right. I tell her to call a pro because I aint touching that fracker again. I’ve had my tour of duty thank you very much.