If you’ve heard a loud bang in the garage and come out to find the door not opening, something could be wrong with its torsion spring. Tightening the torsion spring isn’t about convenience. Rather it’s safer for everyone in your home, including your children and pets, and it adds to your garage door’s longevity.
Steps for tightening garage door spring
Check the torsion spring’s balance
After releasing the garage door opener, check the torsion spring’s balance. You should pull up the door and check whether it stays in place. You‘ll know whether you need to tighten your garage door spring if it comes down after pulling it up. You should balance the door and ensure it’s not too heavy to protect your door opener.
Required tools
The tools you’ll need for the project are:
- Safety glasses
- A correctly-sized wrench
- Two half-inch winding bars
- Two vice grips
- Gloves
Tightening your garage door spring can be dangerous, and you should be careful when attempting this process. You should call a professional if you are not confident you can safely tighten the springs.
Tightening the spring
- You should begin by putting the vice grip on the shaft and leaning it against the ceiling or header on the wall to keep the drum and cable from loosening while you adjust the spring.
- After adjusting the spring, you should put a second vice grip on the track to prevent the door from flying up.
- Adjust the torsion springs with three-quarter turns and push the winding bars in to prevent accidents.
- Ensure you place yourself out of harm’s way when tightening the torsion spring to prevent any accidents.
- Next, you should insert the winding bar and hold it tightly.
- Use the wrench to open the set screws (two), allowing you to twist the torsion spring.
- You should push the torsion spring counterclockwise a quarter of the way and place the other winding bar at the second hole.
- You should repeat this process three times (or as much as needed) while ensuring you keep your body out of harm’s way and tighten the set screws sufficiently once you are done.
- Repeat the process on the other side of the torsion spring.
- You should release the vice grip from the track and shaft and get ready to test your garage door.
Testing your garage door
You should test your garage door by:
- Lifting it about a foot and a half off the floor to see whether it’ll slam to the floor.
- Next, lift it halfway up and check whether it remains in place.
- Finally, you should lift it ¾-way up and check whether it stays in place.
Your door is okay if it stays balanced throughout these tests. You’ll have to tighten the torsion spring even more if the door keeps slamming down or lowering itself or loosen it a little more if it keeps rising when left in place.
Conclusion
Tightening your torsion spring is simple and requires simple tools you can easily access. However, you should call a professional to help you if the process is a little complicated. Have fun!
