Hey, DIY Nation! It's Jeff with HomeRepairTutor.
And I'm going to show you how to replace a garage door extensions spring. Now an extension
spring looks like this. And you can bend it like so. Pretend like you're He-Man or She-Ra.
And you know your extension spring is going bad when your garage door just doesn't behave
like it used to or your spring looks like this. And all the coils are extended and irregular.
So you want to replace the spring because it's dangerous if it pops. It's under tremendous
tension. And if it breaks, and it's not on a safety cable, it could literally kill somebody
and do a lot of harm to your home in addition to that. So this is a project you can do yourself.
There are a lot of safety precautions, but don't be worried about that. We'll address
them in this tutorial. And before you know it, your garage door will be working like
it's brand new. So let's get started! Here are all the tools that you're going to
need. You're going to need two C-clamps, some lineman's pliers, a crescent wrench and a
socket wrench, or a combination of these three wrenches right here. In my case, I needed
a ½" wrench but I couldn't find my other one. So I needed to use either one of these.
And then some duct tape. On top of all those tools, you're going to
need a step stool and a 6' or 8' stepladder like this yellow-and-blue one here.
Open your garage door then place a stepladder directly underneath it because we're going
to rest the garage door on top of the stepladder. Then you want to unplug the garage door opener
if you have one primarily because you don't want any surprises if somebody comes home
and they hit the garage door to open or close while you're working on it. Bad news!
Pull down on the garage door's manual safety release. Then pull down on the garage door
to make sure that it will land on top of the ladder. This is a nice safety precaution.
At this point, you can slide one of your C-clamps on both the left and the right side of the
track so that they rest directly underneath the last roller that's in the track. Make
sure that that C-clamp is tight 'cause these garage doors are heavy.
With all the safety precautions in place—the ladder, the C-clamps, the garage door opener
unplugged—now we can remove the old spring. The extension spring is only attached to a
few different things. Right here you have a pulley. So the spring is attached to the
pulley. We're going to have to remove that pulley. And then there's a safety cable that
runs inside the spring right here. And that safety cable is attached to a bracket that
comes down off your ceiling. So you have to remove that safety cable in order to remove
the spring from this eye bolt right here. I placed some blue tape on this rail here,
and made a mark on it with a Sharpie marker, to indicate the general location of the bolt
that holds the pulley together. And I did that just so I have a reference point for
when I put the pulley back together on the new spring.
The next step is just to loosen this bolt on the pulley. So using the crescent wrench,
or whatever wrench you have, and a socket wrench you can easily do that. So just turn
the bolt counter-clockwise to loosen it. Once you get it to the point whereby you can loosen
it the rest of way with your hand, do so. What you can do is to make sure that the pulley
retains its orientation is take it like this and put a piece of duct tape around it so
that it holds onto the steel cable. That way it won't get distorted and disoriented. You'll
know which way to pull it back up and attach it onto that clamp that holds onto the extension
spring. But this is my way of just rigging it up so that I can keep track of how it's
supposed to be oriented. So here's the safety cable that runs through
your extension spring. At this point, I highly recommend taking a picture of how it's oriented
so that when you untie it, you know how to put it back together when you run it through
the new extension spring. Here's a hot tip: these safety cables, these
steel safety cables, always become unwound. So what you want to do to help yourself out
is take a piece of duct tape. Like I said, it doesn't have to be moustache duct tape.
But that's cool. And just take the duct tape and wrap it around the ends of the safety
cable. This will keep it in one piece and allow you to work with it.
Now you can take this clamp off the end of the spring. Now the spring is just hanging
from that eye bolt. And now you can remove the spring from the eye bolt.
Take a look at this old spring. Oh, my gosh! It's in terrible shape compared to the new
one. So here's the other tip: see how the old spring is red spray paint on the end of
it? Well that's how you match, that's how you figure out which spring to get when you
get to the store. And they're rated based on a few different things. But the primary
way that you choose an old spring is based on this color that's painted on the end. So
match the red with the red and you're good to go.
Place the safety cable clamp back onto the end of the spring. And then thread that safety
cable through the extension spring so that it comes out the other side.
So using the picture that you took of the safety cable, orient the cable the way that
it was before you took the spring off the eye bolt. And then use your lineman's pliers
to really pull down and secure the cable so that it's very taut. As taut as you can get
it. If you need some slack in order to get the
pulley back in place, you may have to remove this S-hook that attaches the steel cable
to this bracket on your garage door. Now what you can do is pull the pulley wheel
with the cable on top of it. Pinch the cable together to hold the pulley wheel in place.
And then slide the bolt through the clip here. And you can bolt it together with the nut.
Take your nut, slip it onto the other side. Just hand-tighten it first.
All right, now what you can do is tighten up that nut and bolt. All right. That's really
good. It's nice and tight. I've one big tip for you: make sure that the
cable that goes over the top of this pulley wheel is to the right of the safety cable
which is right here. Otherwise, the cables are going to get intertwined and that's dangerous.
So just keep an eye on that and make sure that the cables are not comingled with each
other. And that this cable that goes over the top of the pulley is free to move.
Ugh! I'll tell you what. Things like this happen all the time during DIY. Let me show
you something. So this steel cable here is broken. The strands
that make it up, there are at least 2 or 3 that have torn apart. And that means that
this cable needs to be replaced. So I wanted to show you this because whenever you're replacing
garage door parts, it's a great idea to inspect the safety cables or steel cables that are
pulling up the door. Reattach the S-hook to this 3-hole clip. Take
it and slide it into the bracket on your garage door.
Just make sure that the cable that should be on the pulley is in fact on the pulley
and then it runs over the top of it and underneath of it.
The cable should be fairly taut, have some tension in it. If it doesn't, then you can
adjust that S-clip which is attached to the garage door bracket.
Any loose steel cables like this one here should be attached to the garage door bracket
or wound together so that they don't interfere with the safety cable or the pulley cable.
Remove the C-clamps. Reengage your garage door. Take your ladder out from under the
door. And plug your garage door opener in. And while I'm very confident in the work that
I do, I do recommend when you close the door to stand to the opposite side or stand inside
the house or maybe do it from your car just to make sure that you did it the right way.
All right, my friends. That's it. That's how you replace a garage door extension spring.
Not a torsion spring but an extension spring that looks just like this. Well hopefully
your spring doesn't look this bad. But if it does, it totally needs replaced.
So if you have any questions whatsoever, please ask me in the comments section. Or if you
have your own tips, add that to the comments section as well.
Remember, if you're new to my videos or HomeRepairTutor, you can always sign up for my email newsletter.
It comes up every single Friday. And I really set it up so that you'll get tips and tricks
that will save you time and prevent you from feeling overwhelmed with stuff around your
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the newsletter. I think that you'll like it. Until the next video, I hope you have a great
day, and I'll talk to you soon. Take care! [Outtakes]
All right, my friends. That's it. That's how you replace a garage door extension sp...
spr... [chuckles] a spring that looks like this! That you can just manipulate and turn
it into the biggest rubber band weapon in the world.
Hey, everyone. It's Jeff again. And I wanted to send a heartfelt thanks to my buddy, JB,
who's just fantastic. He's one of my biggest supporters; the nicest guy. Even though he
lives from Baltimore and he is a Ravens fan and I'm a Steelers fan, we're still good buddies.
And I wanted to tell you if you could, go over to JB's website, BuildingMoxie.com. Here
it is right here. BuildingMoxie.com. He's got a new YouTube channel that he's building
up, and I think that you're really going to enjoy his videos.
So check out JB's website. JB, I love you, man. I hope you're having a great day. And
everybody have a wonderful week. I'll see you soon.
