Garage doors and their short lived springs along with the trials of finding replacement parts

I installed our garage door a little over 9 years ago, we had only lived in our house for about a month when I replaced it. Our old house did not have a garage, we had a car port and we were both pretty excited about having a garage. Well one fine day my Beautiful Bride was leaving for work, she had not had her coffee yet, when she backed through the garage door. Well not completely through it but enough to completely destroy the door. She felt awful and embarrassed, yep here I am dredging it up again and I am sure that will help. Well we were able to get the door open enough to get the car out so at least we did not have a car crisis. Her car was a Crown Victoria and there was little more than a small scratch on the bumper.

In a past life, I ran a business doing home repairs and one of the services I made REALLY good money on was replacing the bottom sections of wooden garage doors that had rotted out. There was real money in that. Well to be able to get the individual panels you had to know someone, or become a dealer of garage doors. I did the later and completed all the necessary paperwork to be able to purchase each and every part that could conceivable be in or around a garage door. The instant Bride backed through that door I thought no worries, I will just go and pick one up. Well one thing about that was my account was a cash account and since we had just moved into this house we were cash flow poor. I went to The Home Depot and purchased a Clopay door using the Home Depot card that I got just for that purpose, it included a 10% discount on my first purchase. That all worked out fabulous and I tore the old wooden door out and installed the new steel door in a couple of hours.

Well life went on, I replaced the garage door opener along to the way. I really like the Excelerator, made by Genie. It is a screw drive unit and opens the door in short order and it is very quiet and does not throw bits of grease all over like some of the chain drive models do. Life went on and I never really thought about the door, the opener or any of the mechanisms. I just mashed the buttons and up or down the door went. All was well until a little over a week ago, when I came home and when mashing the button found my door would only rise up about 4 inches. Odd I thought. I suspected something with the opener at first but that was later proven wrong. I was able to mash the button and while laying on the ground get the door up enough for me to slide under. Upon further investigation I found the opener to be in good working order and the problem was that the windup torsion spring had failed. Broken into two pieces, I can only imagine the sound that must have made when it snapped.

Inside I go, to call The Home Depot to make sure they have it in stock before I drive over. Well long story but that store is full of idiots and I could not even get connected to the correct department. I decided to end that frustrating phone ordeal and just drive over to the store. Well that proved about as fruitless as the phone call. They stock almost every part for those Clopay doors, every part except the springs. He tells me if I get him the model number, he will be able to order it for me, 2-3 weeks before it comes in. WOW I thought – that sucks. My Jalopy was trapped in the garage and I was not happy about that. I did not place that order because I did not happen to have the model number of my door. I thought, no worries I will get on the internet and find someone else who has one in stock here in town, NOT! Evidently, there are some liability issues with the sale of torsion springs. I do know that they could kill you if you do not know what you are doing. My first call was to Amarr, of course I have an account. Well not so much I find out, when they transitioned from a paper based system to a computer based system it seems since I had not purchased anything for over 10 years and I had been dropped. Damn!

My internet search turned up my answer though, in the form of DDM Garage doors out of Chicago. Let me tell ya folks – I WAS IMPRESSED and if you know me you know that I am not easily impressed. I navigated their web site with ease, it was very well laid out and provided lots of useful information. I found a tutorial on how to replace the very system I had on my exact door. The instructions included pictures and had 79 steps, it was VERY detailed and they were actually written by someone who had done the work, I could tell. Well by the time I finished navigating the site it was to late to call so I planned the call for the next day. Seems Dan Musik is the founder of the company that was started up in 1982 to provide training to maintenance personnel in manufacturing plants, distribution centers, auto dealerships and other facilities with numerous overhead type doors. I also learned that Dan is true to his convictions and openly advertises that DDM Garage Doors exists to bring glory to God. I want to post this from his site “We will do this by serving our customers in any way we can, especially by fulfilling our commitments to them in the best way we can find. We will do this by serving our few faithful stockholders by bringing them a good return on their investments. We will do this for ourselves by seeking "neither poverty nor riches," but "our portion, lest we be full and deny God saying, 'Who is the Lord?' and lest we be in want and steal, and profane the name of our God" (Prov. 30:8-9).”

I am all about companies leadership having the courage to talk about and make God part of their business plan in such an open way. To many places now a days talk a talk but they ain’t walking the walk – good for you Dan! Well I found another section on the site that talked about what information I needed to have when I called to inquire about a replacement spring. It even told me how to gather the information and where the model numbers and serial numbers would be located. I called the next day and low and behold – I got to speak to Dan Musik, I remembered seeing his picture on their home page. So, I passed along the necessary information, size of the door - 16x7, radius of the track – 12 inches, number of reinforcing struts - 3 and that the spring was on the left side of the door. He asked about the three struts, seems that door initially came with only one and he wanted to insure the spring he was going to sell me was of the correct size. He told me he wanted to call Clopay to get the exact weight on the struts before we proceeded. He told me he was pretty sure they were 16 pounds a piece but wanted to verify. He called back an hour or so later and confirmed they were 16 pounds each.

We then talked about what type of spring, seems there were three options he tells me. Option one, the least expensive, was also the spring with the shortest projected lifespan, measured in cycles. Then there was a middle of the road model and then the top of the line. I felt like I was listening to a weird garage door version of Goldie Locks and three bears. So anyway, I ended up going with the top model, it was only a few more bucks. I also decided to replace the winder and have the cones installed on the springs. The winder was old so why not and the cones more because it was going to be a pain in the ass to get the old ones out of the broken springs. Dan was very informative, courteous and VERY knowledgeable. I had the parts shipped ground and he indicated I could save a few bucks by shipping to my work address instead of my home, which I did. It was ground because I did not want to pay a fortune for overnight or even second day, it was very expensive and I was shocked when he gave those shipping costs. Ground was like 14 bucks so ground it was.

So my parts arrived in a clean box and were exactly what I needed. On the spring was the gap distance for the spring to ensure proper operation. It also include the number of twists I needed to wind it up, between 10.5 and 11 it told me and I found that to be exactly right, 10.5 it is. It took me only a few minutes to remove the old broken and worn items and clean up the shaft where the old items clamped down. That slight deformation was caused by the set screws that hold all of it the shaft. A couple of more minutes to install and wind up the new spring and I was all done. Bride came out when she heard the door going up and down and was impressed, I told her it was no biggie but she was impressed all the same – I love her for pumping me up.

I am just so impressed with this company, DDM garage doors. There site is at http://ddmgaragedoors.com/index.php and I am highly recommending them for any of your garage door needs. They are a top shelf operation and during my brief experience with them I found everything and every step to be very positive. They are located at 408 Fremont St. - West Chicago, IL 60185 and their numbers are (800) 383-9548, (630) 293-1312 and the Fax: (630) 293-1526