What Causes It Around Here
Most of the houses we get called to in Albany went up somewhere between 1976 and 2002, with the bulk of that stock clustered in the 1980s and 90s across the two main residential pockets on this side of town. That matters because torsion springs have a rated cycle life, and a door opened twice a day for 20-plus years is well past the point where the original spring is still doing its job safely. Add in a moderate heat climate that keeps garage interiors warm for long stretches of the year, and the factory lubricant on those original springs and hinges breaks down faster than it would somewhere cooler. You get metal fatigue plus dried-out coils working against each other. We're not seeing exotic failures here - we're seeing the predictable end of a part's working life, arriving right on schedule for houses built in that window.
Stocked Parts
Because so many Albany doors share that 1976-2002 build era, we keep torsion springs sized for the standard section-and-track setups common to that period on the truck, along with matching end bearing plates and lift cables.
Spring-job companion parts
We also stock the rollers and hinges that tend to go along with a spring job on a door that age - if one part's worn, the others usually aren't far behind.
Spring sizes not stocked
What we don't stock is every spring size made. Some older or custom doors need a part ordered in, and if that's your situation we'll tell you up front rather than quote you a same-day fix we can't deliver.
What You Are Seeing
A door that won't lift, or lifts a few inches and stops, is the classic sign of a broken torsion spring - the spring above the door does most of the lifting work, and without it the opener is trying to do a job it was never built for. You might also notice a loud bang from the garage, usually when nobody's touched the door; that's the spring letting go under tension. On doors from the 80s and 90s specifically, we also see cable fraying at the drum, a slower-than-normal symptom that shows up as the door sitting slightly crooked when it's down. None of this is an opener problem, even though the opener often gets blamed first.
How We Fix It
We size the replacement spring to the door's actual weight and cycle use rather than just swapping in whatever came off, since a door that's been rebalanced once before may not match its original spec anymore. Cables, bearing plates, and rollers get checked at the same time - on a door built in the 1976-2002 window, replacing a spring without checking the rest of the hardware just means a second service call in a year. If the door itself has warped panels or the track is bent beyond adjustment, we'll say so plainly: at that point a spring job is a patch, not a fix, and we'd rather tell you that than sell you a repair that won't hold.
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