Garage door help! (Off topic but begging for help!)

You either don't have things installed square or enough tension on the cables. When the door is fully up, there still should be some residual tension. That is what keeps it in the upright position. For install, the door is set in place on it's track, then you start cranking the torsion spring(s)

Big warning here: Torsion springs are nasty to tighten or loosen. You need to have the correct size of bars (various mfgs use different sizes), the bars need to be good cold rolled (the hot rolled may bend at the wrong time), and you need to know what you are doing. Failure to heed these leads to a spinning bar and no teeth left in your jaw.

It also sounds like you may have mixed up the support brackets on the track. The track is at a very slight angle to the door frame so that it does not rub all the way down. The hinges match, each hinge up has a slightly longer throw than the one below it. The door runs freely until the last few inches, then moves out to contact the door stops.

And you did figure out that the door is installed in the frame with all the functional checkout, THEN you add the door stops to seal the opening?

If the door hits a joist anywhere, you d> I received a single 7x9 clopay garage door from someone replacing

Forgive my ignorance, but what are you calling "door stops"?

This building is a metal framed building by the way. I am doing the best I can. I may not have wound the spring tightly enough. I also know that one pulley is about an inch lower than the other. And for osme reason the door looks a little cockeyed at the fully up position but when I measure it it is ok.

Door stops: On a wood framed door, you start with the raw 2x4 (or whatever) frame, then nail up some 1x6 stock as the finished surface (casing) between the inner edge of the building and the outer sheathing. Apply siding, brick molding and any other finishing material you want. The garage door is installed inside the building but the framing is never quite right so there are gaps between the door and the casing,

1/4" to 1/2" gaps are quite normal. As the very last thing, the 1/2" x2" door stops are nailed in place with the door down. These are thin enough to take up any imperfections and make it weather tight. A metal shelled building will need the same strips in metal, check with your dealer.

Metal framed buildings: We have metal framed buildings (prefabbed metal support beams with metal siding) and pole barns (wood posts with metal siding). Same difference, they tend to be not very square. If the door looks cockeyed, it is likely that something is not square. Take some diagonal measurements to see what's going on.

The garage door is installed completely inside the building inner wall. It works best if all is square and flat, the door tracks can accommodate some not so flat conditions, tends to bind a bit but it works. It also works if the opening is not square, you just use the door stops to fit it up tight. Looks funny but it works.

stryped wrote:

So the "door stops? are the weatherstriping I bought with the edges that cover the gaps? I hav enot installed those, I was going to do that last.

I think someone was on to something when they said some of the hardware may not be right. The "latches" that attach each section to the next, I noticed the manual called number 1 hinge number 2 hinge etc. But to me the picture looked no different in terms of number 2 vs number 3.

The aircraft cable isn't just winding onto a plain spool, it's following a varying radius tracking snail groove so that the force goes down as the door goes up and approaches the end of the run, to equalize the assistance needed. Otherwise you'd have to fight to get it started and then fight to slow it down at the top.

The track has to be square and level in the doorway, there can't be any obstructions to full travel, and the spring crossbar has to be at the right height and square to the door.

If the door gets cockeyed and the aircraft cable on one side goes slack it will bird-nest on you every time. Same thing if the cable drums are not in line with the pull points on the door, that track can only handle a few degrees of misalignment before the cable derails from the groove.

If you've got structural parts in the way at the ceiling level, you'll have to move them. Make another brace farther back, or put a crossbar under the door path (that will clear the door) to take the load the brace used to. Those steel sheds usually are engineered really close to the edge on strength, don't start removing without replacing.

And as to getting the spring crossbar mounted in the right place, you might have to take down the door and remount it after using 2X8 or

2X12 lumber on the inside to simulate the normal garage door 4X8 or 4X12 header beam and 2X6 vertical to simulate the 4X6 king posts, and take angle brackets and concrete anchors to transfer the weight to the slab. (If no slab, dig a hole and make some sort of a concrete footing there, same reason.)

May need to have 1X planks or plywood filler shims cut to go around the seams of the steel door header and posts on the inside, so the 'new' header and posts are flat, level and square...

I'll bet you tried to modify the mounting locations to pick up on the steel shed skin & seams, and that simply isn't going to work right

- and then the skin is going to fail around the brackets because it wasn't meant to have those point loads there. Adding the wood will spread the loads out over a much larger area and to many small screws.

WARNING: Be VERY careful when installing or removing that tension spring - it can and will take your head clean off if you screw up. You won't like it, and SWMBO won't be too thrilled either.

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It's not much of a difference - maybe 1/8" - 3/16" between adjacent hinges, that's why they number them so they end up in the right order.

The track is maybe 3/4" to 1" further out from the door jamb at the top than the bottom - the instructions should have that number. As the door comes down, it also goes out a bit, and about a foot from the bottom should start contacting the seals at the sides.

There's a method to this madness, which is where reading and understanding the instructions does come in handy.

The only reason you don't see the pros standing there reading the instruction book is we've installed that particular piece of gear a few (hundred) times - but when I get a new model I STILL look through the instruction book for any new surprises they may have added.

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It would help if you were somewhere near a person that has doen it. I installed one for son-in-law a few years ago. I'm in Albuquerque, are you anywhere close? ...lew...

You've got it quite inside out. The spiral drums create a net *constant* force by mirroring the torsion decline as the springs unwind. And these are not used on a standard residential door, since the spring torsion and weight to be lifted both decline linearly as the door goes up (consider why those are both the case). Spiral drums are used on straight-lift commercial doors.

First thing is to understand the principles of how these doors work. See my essay at:

I'm so curious I have to ask...

What brought all that on???

Richard

Years of updating from thousands of people writing me to say they had done it after reading it. Refined from the bitter scrutiny and mucho angry mail from the garage door repair industry. Comments from a few helpful pros. Sort of an extended peer-review.

It's a piece of work, Richard!

Ya done good.

Richard

I bet you spent longer on that essay than it took to repair your garage door. Say, my 17 year old torsion door needs retightening for the umpteenth time. Needs it every year now. Its the really standard 7'x16' door. Is there really no way to order a replacement without unwinding it? Karl

"Karl Townsend" fired this volley in news:48185409$0$87933$ snipped-for-privacy@auth.newsreader.octanews.com:

Holy cripes! Yeah... he's an engineer... It takes longer to read that diatribe than to teach a fourteen year old daughter how to rebuild the whole door!

I solved the replacement parts issue in one fell swoop. I bought a DIY door kit from Lowes. They carry all the parts, crossed by model and size. Springs are cheap, and on the shelf. They have no problem selling to the end-user.

In fact, the door I bought came with two stupid plastic-n-steel worm gear affairs that cannot "let go" accidentally. I tossed them in the junk box for a future project, and installed the springs normally with manual winding rods. Otherwise, the springs are impossible to replace without dismantling _way_ too much hardware. Without the worms, it's just two parts and off.

By the way... don't engineers know about paint and its virtues?

LLoyd

Very useful essay -- I read it very carefully before replacing my door last December.

Of course, my door was in such a state of senility that when I raised it all the way, the cables were completely slack. So the whole issue of unwinding had sort of resolved itself...