Garage Door Safety Check

Hey Folks:

This is a friendly reminder for you to check over the equipment on your overhead doors.

The lift cable on one of my roll up doors snapped today. I DID NOT have a safety cable through the spring and the spring assembly flew off and hit the recycling pile.

For some reason the only the interior springs had safety cables through them. Of course the outboard lift cable is the one that snapped.

I picked up new lift cables for both doors and have repaired the inoperable door. I ran a safety wire through the outboard spring so now both springs on that door are safety wired.

I'll take care of the other door tomorrow night - it gets a lot less use until winter when I pull my car in nightly.

So give all your cables a look over, lubricate the rollers and tighten anything that has loosened back up.

Cheers

Jim

I guess that is one advantage of a car port...no doors. Would rather have an enclosed garage when winter arrives, but not going to happen now.

I am sure that Glenn, who was in grade school at the time, will remember when our nextdoor neighbor had his garage door spring break. I think this was back before they even had safety cables.

Anyway, Earl was wearing a baseball cap. The spring shot up, hitting the bill of the baseball cap he was wearing and impaling the hat in the shingles of the roof on the way up.

If that happened to me, I would not need a laxative for a very long time.

Enjoy and check your springs,

Jim

Glad you weren't hurt Jim, will check the ones in the shop. One set has the longer springs and is probably without the safety cables knowing the previous owner(s). The other two have the coils springs above the door.

So, my garage is a 1942 model, is that why I find the round ends of the spring laying somewhere? Never knew about a safety wire. Dad got tired of his breaking so he went to the torsion spring setup.

I don't think I ever realized it either, never thought much about it. My dad or brother have always been there when I installed them and it just got done without mentioning it.

At this time I don't have a garage or doors but it would be nice to know what to look for when the time comes, is it possible for someone to take a picture of these springs so those of us the that don't know can become informed.