On Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:01:00 +0000, nestork wrote:

C) My sister has a double garage, and her GDO uses two torsion springs.
If I recall correctly, I was told that if one torsion spring breaks,
it's best to replace both because the other won't be too far behind.

I agree. That's the advice from every single web site & installer, although
almost all will also say that if the second spring is less than a few years
old, then they'd leave it be.

The main reason to replace both if the first spring broke at the end of
it's useful life is that the second one is gonna break soon so you may
as well save the additional service call.

Of course, if you do it yourself, you 'might' save some money just replacing
springs as they break - but - personally - I'd use a broken spring as a
golden opportunity to upgrade both springs anyway.

And, if a person is going to be replacing both springs, it's not much
extra work to hire a couple of teenagers to lift the whole assembly off
the garage wall, replace both springs when the assembly is on the
ground, and then put the whole assembly back up again.

Hmmmmmm.... I hope you first unwind both old springs BEFORE removing the
assembly from the door; and I hope you replace the assembly before
winding the new springs.

If you don't ... very very very very bad things are going to happen.

Once you unwind the springs, removing the assembly doesn't require the
neighbors' kids. Since I was relocating my anchor plate, I had to remove
mine and it was trivial to take down from the doorway. Mine was only one
torsion spring, but two springs would only have been four pounds heavier,
as we've already ascertained separately in this thread).

Springs are only roughly 10 pounds each.
The torsion bar is simply a 9' hollow steel 1" tube.
The cable drums are cast aluminum.

The whole thing doesn't weigh much at all - so I'm not sure why the need
for the extra kids. Nothing wrong with having help (I wish my kids would
help me sometimes), but an average guy can easily handle the removal
himself.