There's a reason garage door springs are the one repair even seasoned DIYers are told to leave alone. A torsion spring stores the energy needed to lift a door that can weigh a few hundred pounds — all of it held in a tightly wound coil of steel a few feet from your head. Replacing one isn't complicated for a trained tech with the right tools. Without them, it's the most dangerous repair a homeowner can attempt.

How to tell your spring is broken

The signs are distinctive:

  • A loud bang from the garage, often mistaken for something falling off a shelf. That's the spring letting go of its stored tension all at once.
  • The door is suddenly extremely heavy — the opener strains, reverses, or won't move it at all.
  • The door lifts crooked or only a few inches before stopping.
  • A visible gap in the spring coil above the door.

If you see these signs, stop using the door. Don't run the opener repeatedly and don't try to muscle the door up by hand — with the spring broken, nothing is counterbalancing that weight.

Why springs are dangerous

A wound torsion spring holds hundreds of pounds of tension. Winding and unwinding it safely requires proper winding bars seated fully in the winding cone — not screwdrivers, not rebar, not whatever fits. When a spring is wound with the wrong tools, the bar can slip and release all that stored energy instantly. Emergency rooms see the results every year: broken hands and wrists, facial injuries, and worse. The other DIY failure mode is subtler — installing the wrong size spring. The door may work for a while, but an unbalanced door destroys openers, cables, and rollers, and can fall unexpectedly.

What a professional repair looks like

A proper spring replacement is methodical:

  • The tech measures your spring's wire size, diameter, and length, and matches it to your door's weight — the right sizes are already on the truck.
  • The old spring is safely unwound and the new one wound to spec with proper winding bars.
  • The door is balanced and tested — a correctly balanced door stays put when lifted halfway by hand.
  • The rest of the system gets a safety inspection: cables, rollers, hinges, and opener force settings.

What it costs

At EverLift Doors, spring replacement is a flat $285–$385, quoted in writing before we start, and the job typically takes about 45 minutes. There's no service-call fee with any repair, and the work is covered by a 2-year labor warranty with up to 15 years on parts.

Same-day replacement across Kentucky

A broken spring shouldn't strand your car in the garage for a week. We offer same-day spring replacement across Kentucky — book before 4pm and we're typically on site in about two hours. Call +1 (502) 546-5240 and we'll get your door lifting like it should.