Tinley Park, IL · Same-day service
Extension Springs on Older Tinley Park Garages
There is a quick way to tell which system you have. Stand under the open door and look at the two horizontal rails running back toward the rear wall. If a long spring is stretched alongside each rail and hooked to a pulley at the front, you have extension springs rather than a torsion shaft over the opening.
Serving Tinley Park
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We replace them across Tinley Park, mostly on single-width doors, on freestanding garages behind the older streets near the downtown station, and on the occasional double that was set up this way to save clearance above the header.
Where these still turn up around the village
Extension springs went onto lighter doors and into garages that never had room above the opening for a shaft. In Tinley Park that means the smaller single-car openings on the older blocks, detached garages set back off the drive, and a fair number of doors that simply have not been changed since the house was built.
Those garages are unheated and rarely well sealed, which matters more here than it would in a torsion setup. An extension spring lives out along the track where damp air and the spray thrown off a parked car reach it directly. Rust creeping between the coils shortens its life without ever showing itself.
The parts nobody mentions until one lets go
The spring is one item in an assembly. Each side also has a pulley the lift cable turns around, a hook or clip at the anchor end, a hanger carrying the rear of the horizontal rail, and the cable itself. Pulleys seize and wear a groove into their sheave. Hooks open up. Hangers slacken. Fitting a new spring beside a twenty-year-old pulley is a false economy, so we price the assembly rather than the spring alone.
Both sides go on together in matched lengths. Extension springs work as a pair, and a fresh one next to a stretched one pulls the door out of level from the very first cycle.
Containment cable, and the case for converting
Every extension spring should have a cable threaded down the middle of it and anchored at both ends. When the spring breaks, and it breaks under full stretch, that cable is the only thing stopping it travelling the length of the garage. We fit them where they are missing, which on doors that have had cheap work done is often.
If the door has since been swapped for something heavier, or you are tired of a system with that many wear points, converting to torsion is worth pricing out. It needs real headroom above the opening for the shaft, so it is not always possible. We measure first and advise after, not the other way round.
Other work we do in Tinley 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 Tinley Park.
Questions
Tinley Park questions about this job
One spring snapped. Does the good one have to come off as well?
Yes. Both have stretched and relaxed the same number of times, so the survivor is at the same point in its life. Fitting one leaves the door lifting harder on one side, and that shows up next in the cables and the track.
Are extension springs less safe than torsion springs?
Fitted correctly, with containment cables in place and sound pulleys, they are a perfectly reasonable system. The danger comes from what gets left off. A bare extension spring with no cable through it is the arrangement that injures people.
The door only opens partway now. Is that the springs?
Often, particularly if it also feels heavy by hand and one corner leads the other going up. It can equally be a seized pulley or a cable slipping its groove. Those look identical from the driveway and take a couple of minutes to separate on site.
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