How to tell if your garage door spring is broken
Updated June 2026 · 5 min read
A broken garage door spring is the most common reason a door suddenly "stops working." It almost always happens cold — a Denver morning after a 20° overnight drop, or the first deep-freeze of November. Here are the seven signs we look for when a homeowner calls.
You heard a loud bang from the garage
A torsion spring under 200 pounds of tension snapping makes a sound like a small gunshot. If you heard one and the door now won't open, that's a broken spring 90% of the time.
The door won't open more than 6 inches
With a broken spring, the opener can lift the door a few inches before the safety stop kicks in. The motor strains, then the door drops back down.
Visible 2–3 inch gap in the torsion spring
Look at the spring above the door. A healthy spring is tightly coiled end to end. A broken one has a clean gap where the metal separated.
The door feels twice as heavy by hand
Pull the red emergency release cord and try lifting manually. A balanced door with a working spring lifts with two fingers. A door with a broken spring weighs 150–250 lbs.
The cables are dangling loose
When a spring snaps, the lift cables go slack and often fall off the drum. Don't try to re-thread them — the spring needs to be replaced first.
The opener motor runs but nothing moves
Same symptom as a stripped opener gear, but easier to diagnose: pull the release and try the door by hand. Heavy = spring. Light = opener.
One side of the door is higher than the other
On a two-spring system, one snapped spring leaves the door visibly crooked when partially open. This is a same-day fix — don't keep operating it.
Don't try to replace it yourself
Torsion springs store 150–300 pounds of force. Without the right winding bars and technique, they can fracture an arm or worse. This is the one garage door repair every pro will tell you to call out.
Need it fixed today in Denver?
We stock every common torsion and extension spring on every truck. Most calls are fixed in under an hour from arrival.