Garage door springs

[bluedog225]

I’m at my in-law’s place in Houston. The garage door has seen better days.

Once cable is off the tracks. They had called a repair guy and he said that 10 year old springs are “worn out” and caused the issue with the cable jumping the spool.

Is that a real thing? or is he just making that up? I was under the impression that those springs were good till they broke.

I’d like to be a little better informed when he shows up for the service call. I get the impression he wanted to put on new springs for $450 regardless when he was talking to the old folks.

Thanks

 

[Buckaroo5]

Not a pro but I have put on a few garage door torsion springs. I would guess that the cable jumped because the springs were not under sufficient tension and the door got slammed in the up position. In general, I would agree with you that the springs do not lose tension, perhaps they were never set properly to begin with. You would have to untension the springs to respool the cable and then tension them properly. I am not sure I would want to be tensioning 10 year old springs - if one broke, you could get hurt which is maybe why he wants to replace them.

 

[MikeC55]

Also keep in mind that these torsion springs have a design life of so many cycles, where a cycle is one up/down motion of the garage door (typically 10,000 cycles). So, in 10 years, if you cycle the door an average of twice a day, that's around 3/4 of the way there. It would probably make more sense to replace the springs 'while you're in there', especially if you're paying someone else to do it...

 

[bluedog225]

The guy came out. Bad energy. He tried to hard sell the old man on new springs. Brough out a set of broken springs. Would not make eye contact with me. I told him to put the cable back on the reel and tighten old spring a couple of turns. He made all sorts of excuses about how it was going to break. Ended up lowering the door 2” to tighten up the cable. Wish I’d thought of that. Glad to have him gone. Con man vibes.

Thanks all.