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Is there something I'm missing? A quick search of YouTube reveals tons of garage door spring replacement videos. It doesn't seem like the knowledge or parts are

Is there something I'm missing? A quick search of YouTube reveals tons of garage door spring replacement videos. It doesn't seem like the knowledge or parts are difficult to obtain.

TheGRS 3y ago
Its widely known as one of the most dangerous DIYs you can do. I think typically people working on them will get pushed off their ladder suddenly from the tension in the spring releasing.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I worry more about a steel bar being thrown out with ample centrifugal force or coming around and taking a whack at your jaw.
- derekp7 3y ago
  Happened in my family a number of years ago. The instructions said to crank the spring 7 1/4 turns. So it was really make a 1/4 turn, repeat 7 times. Not 7 full turns plus 1/4 additional. After pulling the vice grips off, the door shot up with such force that it knocked the ladder over, causing a broken collar bone in the process.
  - jollyllama 3y ago
    I tried and failed to repair before, but didn't get injured. I had to take great care with the vice grips and other implements I was using; my intuition was they could become missiles.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Holy crap what a terrible instruction!
8organicbits 3y ago
> If you've researched this subject at all, you will no doubt have heard that you shouldn't be attempting torsion spring replacement as a do-it-yourselfer.
bluGill 3y ago
There are several different springs, some are more dangerious than others. It isn't hard to safely replace any spring. However it isn't always obvious what is safe or unsafe and mistakes can kill.
glasss 3y ago
Probably the year this was published, the blog said the first version was in posted in 2002
mhuffman 3y ago
I suspect that a lot or all of those videos are about "extension spring" replacements and not "torsion spring" replacements. Probably shouldn't do either, but the torsion ones can have instant and catastrophic failure modes during installation or removal.
fencepost 3y ago
The page in question predates the founding of YouTube by ~3 years. It's in the middle of the Geocities time period, back when video distribution on the Internet was probably via Usenet and digital photography was probably on a Sony Mavica writing to floppy disks - or maybe to compact CDR if you were lucky.
- camtarn 3y ago
  Sort of. It was a different world, but not quite that different! Geocities was really dying by 2002. It had been bought by Yahoo! a few years previously, and they were intent on driving it into the ground. Video distribution was indeed fairly rare, but Flash sites were very widespread, sometimes including video, but more often vector animations. The Mavica was still around in 2002, although mostly in CD-R form. But cameras taking flash memory cards were also around, using a wild mix of CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, xD-Picture Card and MMC. SD had just been invented, and a year or so later I had my own cheap digital camera that took SD cards.
14 3y ago
yes this is one of those things that is scaring people but if you pay $500 some other guy can magically do it for you. The fact is that it is not that hard of a job and the dangers can easily be mitigated if you have some basic common sense and knowledge. Unfortunetly common sense is not that common and many people have been hurt doing this job. I myself would not hesitate to do this job like you say lots of information now days on how to do it this site is 22 years old in this post so now days you can see exactly what to do in many videos way before even attempting the job and that alone can take away most of the risk since you get hand held the entire process. I have to say I am a little disappointed in the HN crowd at how shy they are to do this job. All the handy men that do this job now are just humans like you and me and they all had to learn from scratch at some point. Again this is not that hard or dangerous but like the article says it has by shrouded in stories of danger and the trades people would not share their knowledge but told everyone how dangerous it would be so pay them money.

Is there something I'm missing? A quick search of YouTube reveals tons of garage door spring replacement videos. It doesn't seem like the knowledge or parts are difficult to obtain.

TheGRS 3y ago

Its widely known as one of the most dangerous DIYs you can do. I think typically people working on them will get pushed off their ladder suddenly from the tension in the spring releasing.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
I worry more about a steel bar being thrown out with ample centrifugal force or coming around and taking a whack at your jaw.
derekp7 3y ago
Happened in my family a number of years ago. The instructions said to crank the spring 7 1/4 turns. So it was really make a 1/4 turn, repeat 7 times. Not 7 full turns plus 1/4 additional. After pulling the vice grips off, the door shot up with such force that it knocked the ladder over, causing a broken collar bone in the process.
- jollyllama 3y ago
  I tried and failed to repair before, but didn't get injured. I had to take great care with the vice grips and other implements I was using; my intuition was they could become missiles.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Holy crap what a terrible instruction!

8organicbits 3y ago

> If you've researched this subject at all, you will no doubt have heard that you shouldn't be attempting torsion spring replacement as a do-it-yourselfer.

bluGill 3y ago

There are several different springs, some are more dangerious than others. It isn't hard to safely replace any spring. However it isn't always obvious what is safe or unsafe and mistakes can kill.

glasss 3y ago

Probably the year this was published, the blog said the first version was in posted in 2002

mhuffman 3y ago

I suspect that a lot or all of those videos are about "extension spring" replacements and not "torsion spring" replacements. Probably shouldn't do either, but the torsion ones can have instant and catastrophic failure modes during installation or removal.

fencepost 3y ago

The page in question predates the founding of YouTube by ~3 years. It's in the middle of the Geocities time period, back when video distribution on the Internet was probably via Usenet and digital photography was probably on a Sony Mavica writing to floppy disks - or maybe to compact CDR if you were lucky.

camtarn 3y ago
Sort of. It was a different world, but not quite that different! Geocities was really dying by 2002. It had been bought by Yahoo! a few years previously, and they were intent on driving it into the ground. Video distribution was indeed fairly rare, but Flash sites were very widespread, sometimes including video, but more often vector animations. The Mavica was still around in 2002, although mostly in CD-R form. But cameras taking flash memory cards were also around, using a wild mix of CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, xD-Picture Card and MMC. SD had just been invented, and a year or so later I had my own cheap digital camera that took SD cards.

14 3y ago

yes this is one of those things that is scaring people but if you pay $500 some other guy can magically do it for you. The fact is that it is not that hard of a job and the dangers can easily be mitigated if you have some basic common sense and knowledge. Unfortunetly common sense is not that common and many people have been hurt doing this job. I myself would not hesitate to do this job like you say lots of information now days on how to do it this site is 22 years old in this post so now days you can see exactly what to do in many videos way before even attempting the job and that alone can take away most of the risk since you get hand held the entire process. I have to say I am a little disappointed in the HN crowd at how shy they are to do this job. All the handy men that do this job now are just humans like you and me and they all had to learn from scratch at some point. Again this is not that hard or dangerous but like the article says it has by shrouded in stories of danger and the trades people would not share their knowledge but told everyone how dangerous it would be so pay them money.