Single Spring to a Pair [Garage Door Torsion Springs]

hey guys it's Avery with Xpress browser parts calm today we wanted to make a video explaining how to convert from a single tourism spring to a pair of Springs on your garage door now there are several benefits to converting to a pair as I'm sure you are aware being that you are tuning in today the first being longevity making the springs last longer because they are sharing the workload instead of just a single spring doing all the work another one would be safety so say if one spring breaks you still have another spring there to help you raise and lower the door so you're not trapped in your garage another one would be balance by having a pair of Springs you can balance out the door better because there are more options for adjustment being that you have two Springs to wind and the list can go on and on now determining what Springs you need to convert to is relatively easy and we will explain that at the end of the video at the timestamp that you see on the screen which are welcome to skip to now if you'd wish otherwise let's get started with the steps required to convert from a single spring to a pair all right now the first thing we always want to keep in mind when dealing with garage doors is safety so the very first step we want to do is go back to the opener and disconnect it from the power once we do that we're gonna go over to the front of the opener and we're gonna pull that emergency release cord disconnecting the opener from the door what this does is so that if somebody inadvertently hits the opener while we're working on it it doesn't raise up and get us while we're working on the door so with that done we're gonna go over to the track here and another precaution we like to take us take a pair of vice grips and you're gonna secure these just above one of the rollers and what that does is it so when we adjust the springs later and raise the door up for the first time if the springs are a little hot and the door wants to raise up by itself this stops that so it allows us the opportunity to adjust them maybe a little bit down a little bit just so it doesn't do something that we're not prepared for so with all that done we are ready to hop up and start working on our spring okay now the first thing we want to do when you have your single spring here is make sure that is in fact broken if you're replacing a broken spring or if it has tension on it if it's not broken so looking at our spring here you can see that it is actually broken this gap here a spring will expand a couple of inches when it is under tension so you'll see that expansion there when it breaks now if this spring were to have tension on it you do need to take that tension off before you release your bolts here what I'm about to do also this video correlates to a single torsions bring to a pair so if you're doing from a pair to a pair we have another video explaining how to do that so if you do have a pair and then you have a broken one you need to unwind your other one as well and we show you how to do that in the other video basically what you'll do here - you're gonna loosen up your set screws here on your spring we use a 3/8 square bit socket which makes this a lot quicker and just to make this video go a little quicker we want to do that for you but you can just use a simple 3/8 wrench to do that so what we're gonna do here I'm gonna go over here and again this is broken if you want to need to take any tension off of any Springs do so watch our video how to do that so I'll come over here I'm just gonna undo these real quick so that frees up my spring here the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to go over to my bolts here and I'm gonna loosen these up normally these are a 9/16 bolt so you can just take a 9/16 wrench we're gonna use power tools because it's again make that this video go a little quicker for you today so I'm gonna come over here and I'll loosen visa for ya and once that's done you're pretty much done taking your spring off another thing that's gonna be holding us up here is your cable drums now so I'll move over there and show you how to take those off so we can slide our spring off the shaft now that our spring is loose we're free to take off our cable drums rule which will allow us to slide our torsion shaft left to right so we can put our new Springs on so the first thing we're going to want to do here is we're gonna go to these set screws on our cable drum so we're gonna loosen these up which allows us to move that cable drum so again 3/8 ranch here go up to the set screw marks just put them right on here we're just going to loose them up just like that do the other one here loose him up I'm gonna take our cable just set it off to the side here pops right off lay it loose then again the cable drum will be loose now so we can slide that again on the other side you're just going to do the exact same thing while you're doing that so well that's loose again it allow our torsion tube to move left to right so we'll do that and you'll see it come loose there so I'll take my drum slide it off set that to the side what I'll do is I'll take my spring then and I'll slide it over slides right off like that you take my other broken piece here slide it right off and I will take this opportunity to put on one of our new torsion springs that we have so this is a right round spring which actually goes on the left side of Center for most torsion systems okay so you'll see it has a red little swab of paint here so we'll take this we'll slide it on like that slide it towards the center we'll take our cable drum put it right back on slide it right back on the bearing there and we'll pull it all the way down so our other side will come loose and we're free to put this ring on the other side now all right now that we have repeated the exact same process on the other side we've used a left wound spring with a black cone on the right side and remember that is a red cone right round spring so now that we have them we're gonna bolt them together in the center so we're gonna pull this together you'll notice when you order from our website we do include one of these nylon bushings you'll notice some of these actually have a metal one built-in so you'll take ours and simply toss it if not this just goes right in the center you get one per pair so you just put it in there and bolt them together so now that we have those we'll slide them together take our bolts bolt these together and you'll remember when we took these off we used a 9/16 wrench or socket if you're using power tools like these good and snug now that these are bolted we are free to put on our first cable now moving on to our cables it's pretty relatively simple process what we're gonna do here is we're annotator cable you're gonna notice there's a notch on the end of this cable it's gonna go in this notch here on the drum you'll notice when we put this on its facing in towards the drum and not out so it gets caught on these brackets so we're gonna do is we're gonna feed it on then we're gonna lead the cable onto these runners here turning the cable and we're going to slowly push it back towards the bracket make sure that's good and on there all the way back around notice when the cable goes down it's free and clear it's not hung up on any of these brackets or the door itself so once that's good we're gonna hold that and then we're gonna secure this in place by tightening our set screws here so again that's a 3/8 wrench I'll take this and tighten these down now we get a lot of questions on our tech line here is how tight do we tighten these what we recommend is once you go and you hit this tube once you hit the tube we recommend going about a half of a turn more and that sets it into this tube and so that's good to go now what we're gonna do here so that when we let go we don't lose our cable here and we're gonna put on our next cable we're gonna take a pair of vise grips here and make sure this is good and taunt here so that's good on there we're gonna take a pair of vise grips and we're gonna secure this on to the tube what that does is that keeps this tube good and taunt so that when we put our other cables on this tube doesn't loose and lose our cables so now that we have this cable on we're going to put the next cable on and then we're going to move towards putting rotations or turns on to our torsion springs now that we have repeated the exact same process on the other side both of our cables are taut and being held taunt by that vise grip that we put on the tube so both cables will taunt we're good to put tension on our first spring now you're gonna be noticing we're gonna be using winding bars these are half-inch steel bars that fit perfectly and encompass as an entire hole on the torsion spring we do sell these on our website please please please do not use anything but winding bars to wind up your torsion springs if you use rebar or we've even heard people using dowel rods or rat tail files or something to wind up their Springs this isn't really safe and you should not do that so when it comes to Springs this is the most important and safe thing you can do is use the proper tools to wind up your Springs so now that we're ready we need to think how many turns that we're going to be putting on these Springs you'll notice this is an 8 foot high door and we say on our website it's 35 quarter turns on each spring and you can find that turn start right on our website so each spring is going to take 35 quarter turns so I'm gonna take my winding bar I'm gonna put it in this hole make sure it's good it locks in there so then I'm gonna raise up that is one quarter turn so now I'm gonna take my second winding bar and I'm gonna put it in the other hole that's two quarter turns and I'm gonna go all the way up to 35 so that's 3/4 33 34 and 35 so now that we have the proper amount of turns what I'm gonna do is make sure this the bottom bar is good and in I'm gonna rest that against the door and I'm gonna slowly pull out my other winding bar that leaves all the tension of this spring on this bar now you'll notice when I was winding up this spring I'm keeping my head clear of this cone so if there anything were to go wrong or this bar would slip or anything it's not an indirect line of the spring where I would get hurt you'll notice also I'm not wearing any safety goggles when I'm filming these videos that's just due to the lighting restrictions that we have if I was wearing goggles there's a lot of glare and anything like that so we do recommend using goggles that we just can't in this circumstance so now that we have all the turns and everything on our spring what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our 3/8 wrench again and we're going to tighten down our set screws and each spring do have does have two so we're gonna tighten these down again we're gonna hit the tube and we're gonna go a half of a turn things that have turned so that's good and tight the next thing we're going to want to do is we're gonna release the tension on this spring because both cables are holding that new tension so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put my bar in here it's encompassing the entire hole it's going in there I'm gonna raise up I'm maybe an inch or so what this allows me to do is pull out my bottom bar and then I can slowly release the tension on my spring which puts the tension on the cable so I can pull my bar out once that's good we're free to wind up our other torsion spring 33 34 and 35 so that puts 35 quarter turns on each of our Springs now remember that is just for an 8-foot door if you have a 7-foot door it's thirty one quarter turns and you can find that turn start right on our website so now that these have the full amount of turns that we want we're gonna set our set screws here using our 3/8 wrench we're gonna again go to a hit that tube and then we're gonna put about a half a turn on there to lock it in you gotta hit that to go about I have to turn once these are tight I'm gonna take my first rod here I'm gonna push it in the spring I'm gonna push up about an inch that releases the tension from this one and I'm gonna slowly lower this down putting the tension from the springs onto the cables so we're good to go now that both Springs have the proper amount of turns on them I'm gonna go over to my vise grip that was on the torsion tube and release that that was holding the cables taunt it's no longer needed because the springs are doing the job of that then what we're free to do is release our secondary vise grip on our track that was there for if the springs were a little loaded or too hot the door did something we weren't prepared to do it was going to stop that so we're gonna go down there put a hand on the door release the vise grips and then we're gonna raise and lower the door a couple times to see how well balanced that it is if you're unsure how to do that check out our other how-to videos and how to do that it really goes in-depth and shows you really the nitty-gritty of how to do that professionally and successfully and safely so once that's all good your doors balance you're free to reconnect it to the opener and you're good to go all right now that we're finished something to keep in mind when converting to a pair of Springs is that your garage door requires a certain amount of lifting force that is currently being achieved by your single torsion spring now it would be nice to simply measure up your current spring and at an identical spring to the other side but this unfortunately isn't how it works by doing this we would be double the amount of lifting force required by the door and the door wouldn't even go down now that we're going to a pair of Springs we need each spring to lift half the doors weight so that together they do the work of what your current single spring was doing so this leads us to the question of how do we determine what the new pair of Springs will be well luckily enough we here at Express garage door parse comm do offer a couple of options to make this process as easy and quick as possible the first being simply call our free tech line and we'll simply tell you what the new pair of Springs will be based off your current single spring or you can just shoot us an email and you'll get a response just as quickly keep in mind all of our contact information is right on our website that you do see below and you can stay tuned to the end of the video and we'll put it there for you as well now if you do need help measuring out your current existing single spring we can help you with that as well you can just contact us via phone or email or even refer to our other how-to video where we demonstrate how to measure please remember if you have any questions related to your Springs always feel free contact us at our free tech line or email or just hop over to our website we thank you so much for tuning in today and have a wonderful rest of your day [Music] you

Channel: Express Garage Door Parts

Views: 260,333

Keywords: garage door springs, garage springs, garage door torsion springs, torsion springs, conveerting to a pair of springs, single spring to a pair, spring conversion, garage door, changing to a pair of garage door springs, overhead springs

Id: c6mQ8bUxdsU

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019