On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 04:11:45 +0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded
wrote:

Last week the garage door torsion spring snapped. It was at least
twenty-five years old and no one lamented it's short life. So a
day or two later we got the spring replaced, and a new garage
door opener for good measure. The door is wood, single car sized,
and quite heavy. I don't have any specs, but the spring is
clearly metal, so here I am.

I was not there when the installer was, but I was told he
recommended oiling the spring with WD-40 every three months. Now,
to me "oiling" and "WD-40" are not the same thing, but I can see
people confusing them.

I can see two theories behind why you'd want to oil the spring:
1) a light coat of thin oil will keep it from rusting; and
2) as the door opens and closes, the tension put on and released
from the spring causes it to rub against itself.

With the previous install, the rollers were occaionally -- perhaps
yearly -- lubricated with white lithium grease but that's it. At
the end of the life of the old spring, it had a small amount of
rust, but I don't think it caused the spring to fail early. Nor
did the spring look like it had worn down much, so I'm not sure
the rubbing action is very significant.

So what should I plan on doing?

Here's what I do on my GDO springs:

There is a need to release the tension on the existing spring, so I
count the number of turns it takes to release it. I use that to
ballpark the turns on the new one/pair. I've never seen the need to
oil the spring or torsion rod, so I haven't, and I have never heard a
squeak from mine. Spray lithium would work OK, I suppose, and if I
used it, I would spray it between the coils onto the rod, perhaps
within 6" of the ends, but never on the ends, where you adjust the
spring tension. It could make it harder to retain adjustment.

I've never seen a rusted-out or rubbed-through garage door spring, of
either style, either, so I wouldn't worry much about it. They usually
fatigue.


------
even if this isn't metalworking, it's metal

Youbetcha.

--
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
-- Margaret Lee Runbeck