Bill Roper's Journal

Replaceing that spring is no job for those untrained to try.

Not only that, but it can be downright dangerous. There's a lot of energy in one of those springs - enough so that, if it gets loose in the wrong way, it can take off arms, legs, or heads. That's one of the reasons that the torsion springs are now wound around the big steel shaft that winds the cable. With the big springs on either side of the door, they now put aircraft cable through the middle to contain things - I've seen the results of a spring break on (older) installations without the cable; the resulting pieces flying around punched holes through the sheetmetal of the car inside the garage.