Highland Park, IL · Same-day service
Side-Mounted Springs on Older Highland Park Garages
Extension springs run along the horizontal tracks, one down each side, stretching as the door comes down and pulling back as it rises. You find them on older garages here far more often than on anything built in the last twenty years.
Serving Highland Park
Free on-site estimates. Emergency work available.
BH Garage Door replaces extension springs throughout Highland Park, mostly on frame garages at the back of a lot and on coach houses converted decades ago. Springs go in as pairs, pulleys are changed alongside them, and containment cables are fitted whether the door had them before or not.
Why the older garages still run them
Extension springs need almost no headroom above the opening, which is exactly why they went into low-ceiling garages built long before high-lift hardware was common. A good number of those garages are still standing behind houses on the older streets and down the drives near the ravines.
They are also unheated. A spring that goes through a wet-then-freezing cycle a few hundred times over a winter picks up surface rust between the coils, and rust between coils is where fatigue cracks begin. Road salt riding in on the car adds to it. That is the main reason the same spring lasts longer in a heated attached bay than it does out back.
The containment cable is not optional
A stretched extension spring stores a great deal of energy in a straight line. When it lets go, the pieces travel along that line - into the garage, into whatever is parked there. A containment cable is aircraft cable threaded through the middle of the spring and anchored at both ends. It does nothing at all until the spring breaks, and then it keeps the halves on the wire.
Older installs often have none. Home inspectors write that up, and they are right to. We fit them as part of every extension spring job, and we will retrofit them to a door that is working fine if that is all you want done.
Pulleys, cables and keeping the pair matched
The spring is half the system. Each side runs over a pulley, and the pulley bearing wears out on roughly the same schedule as the spring itself. A seized pulley flattens the cable, and the flattened cable then saws at the pulley. Replace one without the other and the new part inherits the damage.
Springs go in as a matched pair for a reason. Two springs pulling at slightly different rates rack the door in its tracks, which shows up as one side reaching the floor ahead of the other. If a door is heavy enough that extension springs are working right at their limit, we will say so and price a torsion conversion beside it - but only where the headroom genuinely exists.
Other work we do in Highland Park
- Torsion Springs
- Roller Repair
- Panel Replacement
- Smart Openers
- Commercial
- Custom Doors
- Maintenance
- Safety Inspection
- Lubrication
- Spring Replacement
- Opener Repair
- Installation
- Emergency Service
- Cable Repair
- Track Repair
Extension Springs in nearby towns
More on extension spring replacement, or everything we cover in Highland Park.
Questions
Highland Park questions about this job
One spring snapped and the other looks fine. Can you replace just the broken one?
We would rather not. The pair has carried identical loads for identical years, so the intact one is close behind. A mismatched pair also pulls the door out of square in the track.
What is the thin cable running through the middle of my springs?
That is the containment cable. If the spring fails it stays on that wire instead of leaving the wall. If your door has extension springs and nothing threaded through them, that is the first thing worth correcting.
Would torsion springs be better on my garage?
Sometimes. Torsion gives smoother travel and better balance, but it needs headroom above the opening for the shaft. In many of the older detached garages around town there is not enough, and a correctly sized extension pair is the right answer.
Book Highland Park extension springs
Pick an arrival window online, or call and speak to someone now. Free on-site estimates.
Emergency service available · Free on-site estimates