MikeB wrote:
Hi guys, I hope someone here can help me out. We're in a bit of a jam!

Our garage door is jammed. No amount of force seems to be able to move
it. I have been able to lift it about 18 inches using our two car
jacks, but no further.

I have disconnected the electrical opener, so it is not working
against that.

At the top of to door openeing, on the wall is a horizontal bar with
two coil springs. At the end of the bar are two pulleys with cable
that go to the bottom of the door. I think this is a counter-weighting
mechanism to enable easy lifting of the door. The right-hand spring
seems broken. The cable on the right is slack, the cable on the left
is very tight.

The door is jammed solid, I cannot move it up or down by more than an
inch or so. I checked the rollers on the sides and they do not seem
jammed. Any ideas on how I can free up to doors? We need our cars!

Thanks!

BTDT, very recently. Luckily, it happened as I closed the door leaving
for work, and had 1 untrapped car. (Boy did I cuss when I got home that
night, and all the opener did was make one end of door go up a couple of
inches. WTF?) Fix was an emergency service call to local overhead door
vendor. Within 24 hours, they did a temporary repair with a cable clamp
reconnecting the broken ends of the spring, for about 20 bucks. I went
ahead and had both springs replaced, for about $275, but I had to wait a
week for an opening in their schedule, to get that done. If you call and
say 'trapped cars', that bumps you to the top of the list for the
temporary repair, at least for the people I used.

You theoretically could undo the spring on the other side and open the
door, but I would advise against it. It is likely to make the eventual
repair cost even more, and those are greasy nasty parts that will bite
you. And without the counterweighting, those doors are heavy. Cabs, kind
neighbors/coworkers/using up a couple vacation days till the repair guy
can get there, are the painless solution.

--
aem sends...