Anyone have experience with garage doors?

[DarrenDriven]

Hey guys, one of my garage doors is not rising straight. It is a little askew and it is causing some awesome grinding noises when it rises. I already had to replace the motor in my opener once because of this and I tried to bend the track a little to fix it, but I don't think the track is the problem.

There are two torsion springs mounted inside the wall directly over the garage door. Each spring has a cable that attaches to the bottom corner of the door. One on the right and one on the left. I think that it's possible that one of these springs needs to be tightened to even out the counterbalance pressure and that is causing the door to lean to one side a little.

I am SCARED to adjust the spring because I have no idea what kind of tension is on there, and I don't have a proper tool (long bar with a cylindrical end to fit into the crank mechanism) so I would probably hurt myself trying.

Anyone here have any experience with this stuff? If so, could you help me out so I don't have to spend another $125 fixing my opener this year? Thanks!

[Miniata]

I worked for a garage door company installing and repairing garage doors and openers for 3 years awhile back. It isn't your springs (or your opener). They work together to lift the door, one spring having more tension on it than the other could cause it to be out of balance (go up easier or harder than it should), but won't cause the door to be cockeyed in the opening and scrape on the tracks. Most likely what happened is one of the drums that the cable winds up on slipped on the shaft the drums and springs are on, which would cause the door to no longer be level.

Without the proper tools and training trying to adjust the drums/cables can be just as dangerous as adjusting the tension on the springs, people have been seriously injured because of all the tension on the springs. It would take me or another trained professional with the proper tools maybe 15-20 minutes to adjust the cables and level the door.

I hate to say just call a profesional since it could cost $100-150 for the service call and repair, but it is pretty dangerous. I still have scars on my wrist from attempting the same cable/drum adjusting procedure when I was inexperienced and just starting out at the garage door company, although in this case it was with a large old commercial wood door that had at least 3-4 times as much tension on the springs as a normal residential door, and things went poorly. The method I was using would have worked on a smaller door, but not the 12-14' high monster of a door I was working on.

[NYNOMAD]

Those springs are dangerous. I had one break once when I was there - scary.

[gmookher]

those wind ups?
call a pro. not worth getting hurt.

[DarrenDriven]

Thanks guys, that is the advice I needed. It seemed scary to me, so I didn't want to even try... I'll seek professional help.