Stocked Parts
Most of the springs we pull out of Burbank garages were sized for doors built around 1965, when a lot of this part of the service area went up. That means a common torsion spring wind and a shaft diameter that isn't hard to match, as long as the door itself hasn't been swapped out for something newer with different hardware. We carry standard torsion springs for single and double doors in that era's sizing on the truck, plus the end bearing plates and cable drums that wear out alongside them. What we don't carry is every obscure extension spring length from a door that's been modified twice since it was hung, if your setup has been changed from the original, we may need to order a part, and we'll tell you that on the spot instead of guessing.
Doing It Yourself
A torsion spring holds enough stored tension to break a wrist or worse if the winding bars slip, and that risk doesn't change because the door is 60 years old instead of 6. If your spring has snapped, the safe DIY move is to leave the door down, unplug the opener so nobody tries to run it on a broken spring, and call for the repair. Extension springs are lower tension and some owners do replace those themselves, but on a torsion setup we'd rather you not learn winding-bar technique on a spring that's already under load. One honest limit: if the drums, bearing plates, or the shaft itself are worn from age, swapping just the spring is a temporary fix, and we'll say so rather than sell you a spring job that fails again in a year.
What It Costs
We don't have a fixed number to quote you here, and pricing depends on whether it's a single spring, a matched pair, and what shape the rest of the hardware is in, a common finding on doors from the 1960s. What we can tell you is that Burbank sits in a service area with a median household income of $83,975, and most jobs here are straightforward spring swaps rather than full hardware rebuilds, since the housing stock is old enough to need springs but not so far gone that everything around them is failing at once. Ask for a number when we're on site looking at the actual spring and shaft, not before.
Why It Happens Here
Burbank sits about 2 miles from Oak Lawn, close enough that the housing pattern is the same: a lot of these garages went up when the surrounding area was built out in the 1960s, with the broader service area's stock running 1938 to 2000 and clustering hardest in the 1960s and '70s. A torsion spring is rated for a number of open-close cycles, not a number of years, but a door installed in the mid-60s that's still on its original spring has usually put in more cycles than the spring was built for. Add in a cold-winters climate where steel contracts and gets brittle in low temperatures, and a spring that's been quietly weakening for years finally lets go on a January morning instead of a mild one.
How It Shows Up
The classic sign is a loud bang from the garage, usually first thing in the morning or right when the door's cold, that's the spring letting go rather than anything hitting the door. After that, the door feels heavy if you try to lift it by hand, or the opener strains and stalls partway up. Some owners notice a visible gap in the coil itself when they look up at the spring above the door. On older torsion setups especially, you might also notice the door goes crooked as it opens if only one spring on a two-spring door has failed, since the other side is still pulling its own weight and the door racks sideways in the track.
What Can Go Wrong
Running an opener against a broken spring is the most common way a small repair turns into a bigger one. The opener motor isn't built to lift the full weight of the door alone, and forcing it strips the gear or burns out the motor, turning a spring job into a spring-and-opener job. On the older doors common to this area, a broken spring can also let the door drop hard enough to bend a track or crack a panel if it's not caught in time. And if both springs are original to a mid-1960s install and one has already gone, the other is close behind, replacing just the failed side often means a second call within the year.
Other services in this area
Questions, answered
Why did my spring break in cold weather?
Cold makes steel more brittle and less forgiving of the flex it goes through every time the door opens and closes. Combined with a spring that's already near the end of its cycle life, a cold snap is often what pushes a weakening spring past its breaking point rather than causing the wear itself.
Do you carry the right size spring for an older Burbank garage?
For doors from the 1960s era common in this part of the service area, yes, standard torsion spring sizes are on the truck. If your door or hardware has been modified from the original setup, we may need to confirm the shaft and drum sizing on site before ordering the exact spring.
Is it cheaper to replace one spring or both?
We don't have a set price to give here, but on a two-spring door where one has failed, the other has usually seen the same number of cycles and isn't far behind. We'll look at both and give you a straight answer on whether replacing just one makes sense for your door.
Tell Us What the Door Is Doing
Call and we'll ask a few questions before a truck leaves, then give you a straight answer on repair versus replace.