Spring Repair for Burke's 1970s and 80s Garage Doors

What the Fix Involves

Burke is a mid-size suburb, not a handful of streets - 13,768 households, which is enough volume that a predictable fault shows up again and again instead of a grab-bag of one-offs. The job is almost always a broken torsion spring, or a pair of them, mounted above the door on a shaft over the header. We measure the wire size, inside diameter, and length against the door's weight, then wind in a matched replacement set, set the drums, and check cable tension on both sides. On double doors with two springs, we replace both even if only one broke, because the surviving spring is usually close behind it on cycle count. We do not patch a spring with a come-along and send you on your way; that's a callback waiting to happen.

Time on the Job

A straight torsion spring swap on a single door usually runs under an hour once we're set up. Burke's median home dates to around 1979, which puts a lot of doors in the original torsion-spring era rather than the older extension-spring setups you'd find in prewar stock - that means standard mounting, not improvised brackets, and that keeps the job from turning into a redesign. Where it runs long is when the drums are worn from running on a spring that broke and left the cables loose, or when the torsion shaft itself is bent. Those add diagnostic time before any spring goes on.

Parts We Carry

We stock the common torsion spring sizes that match what went up across this area's 1960s-70s building wave and carried through into the late 1970s construction Burke is built on - standard wire gauges for single and double doors, matched sets, and the drums and cables that typically fail alongside a spring. What we don't keep on the truck is anything oversized or custom-wound for a heavier insulated door outside that standard range; those get ordered and that adds a day or two. If your door is original to a 1979-built house, odds are good we're carrying exactly what it needs.

How It Shows Up

The door won't open, or it opens a few inches and stops - that's the spring doing none of the lifting anymore. Sometimes it's a bang from the garage, loud enough to hear in the house, which is the spring letting go under tension. Other times it's gradual: the opener strains, the chain or belt makes a new noise, and within a few weeks of cold weather the spring finishes failing. This region sits in a severe cold climate band, and a spring near the end of its cycle life is more likely to snap on a hard freeze morning than in July - the metal's less forgiving when it's cold.

Where This Job Goes Sideways

The spring itself is rarely the expensive part. What turns a routine call into a longer one is a torsion shaft that's bent from running unbalanced after the first spring broke, or a bottom bracket that's cracked under load. We check both before we quote the job, not after. Another way it goes sideways: a homeowner's already tried tightening or adjusting the broken spring themselves. A torsion spring under tension is not a DIY fix - it's one of the few things in this trade that can put someone in the hospital, and we won't talk anyone through doing it over the phone.

The Cost of This Job

We don't post a flat number here because wire size, door weight, and whether drums or cables need replacing all move the price. What we can tell you is that Burke's housing stock - mostly built between the 1960s and 1979 - uses standard torsion hardware we stock on the truck, so most jobs don't carry an order-in delay or a custom-wind charge. We travel the 12 miles from McLean for the call; there's no local branch add-on, but there's also no same-neighborhood response time we can promise. See Burke garage door repair for the full range of what we handle out here, or check spring repair details for McLean if you're closer to the shop.

Frequently asked questions