Garage door springs

[elalexander]

The other morning we heard a load noise and upon investigating I found one of our garage door springs had failed and flew across the garage. Lucky for us the wife's car was outside at the time and noboby was in the garage. I have been working on finishing the drywall and geting ready to paint in here as warm weather permits. Also, I had just put my tiller on my tractor, changed oil etc. a few days before this. I got 2 new replacement springs, if one failed the other won't be far behind. Anyway, they came with an internal cable to prevent them from flying around should they break. I thought I'd pass this along so you can look your springs over and maybe if they don't have a cable install one. This could have been very serious to a person and done untold dollars worth of damage to a vehicle.

I've attached two pics, one where the spring landed and the other from the front of the garage where it came from. It's hard to believe this thing flew off of the eyebolts like it did.

 

[billbill1]

I've been lucky a couple of times when the spring broke too, the cable is a very good idea.

 

[BB_TX]

I had one break just last week. But mine are the coil springs at the top of the door with the rod thru the middle so they can't come off. I did not have time to replace it myself so we had to have it done. Springs are relatively cheap. Labor is not.

 

[Bird]

Yep, the house we had from 1977 to 1989 had the pair of springs on each side of the door, compressed when the door was open, and stretched when the door was closed. And I had the same thing happen. One of those springs broke and hit the wall at the front of the garage. We were just glad no one was out there at the time, but we sure heard it hit. I haven't seen any that came with cables through them, but when I replaced mine, I rigged my own cable through all 4 of them.

 

[browns40]

The cables seem to be pretty standard safety practice on all garage doors the are making nowadays... an insurance guy who came by work even suggested sheathing the cable-run spring with a section of canvas firehose material in case the spring shattered when someone was there... that seemed a little too much like overkill to me, given I had never actually heard of the kind of failure you described, but I see now why they have that cable at least!

Thanks for sharing!

 

[ultrarunner]

I've had several go... the doors were all installed in the late 50's and early 60's.

I've seen people add a center cable to existing old style springs. I think the center cable code came in sometime in the 70's?

My neighbor's garage spring snapped and flew into the back window of her 3 month old Cadillac...

 

[YanmarFever]

Our spring broke at 1am in the morning, I jumped out of bed with a gun & flashlight in hand. I was a little embarassed when I saw it.

Sure made a heck of a racket though.

 

[elalexander]

I'll post pics of the new spring with cable as soon as it warms up a bit. And yea, It makes a heck of a noise.

 

[rimshot]

I've had this happen two or three times. It occurs mostly to my garage door with one 16' door and double side springs on each side that stretch as you close. If it's going to happen, it usually picks the coldest night of the year.

rim

 

[elalexander]

As promised here are the pictures of the new spring with the cable. I renamed each picture so you can see the ones you want to look at. Oh yeah, this is a safety forum not a drywall one so please be nice when you see the drywall. (Actuall I'm licking the last owners calf. Really