What You Pay
We don't have a posted price list for this specific job, and we're not going to invent one here. What we can tell you is how the decision gets made on a Clayton door. With median income at $90,886, most homeowners here are choosing between a spring swap and a full opener-and-hardware upgrade, not between a spring swap and living with a broken door. On a house built around 1972, if the spring has failed once, the odds are decent the matching spring and the original rollers are close behind it - same age, same wear curve. We price the spring job on its own, and we'll tell you straight if the drum, bearing plate, or cable look like they're next, so you're not back on the phone in six months. We don't quote a number sight unseen over the phone; torsion spring sizing depends on door weight and wind load, and guessing wrong means a spring that's either dangerous to wind or too weak to lift the door.
How We Fix It
A broken torsion spring on a double door is a two-person, right-tools job - not something you want to eyeball on a Saturday. We unload the door first, clamping it off any opener load, then back off the broken spring with winding bars sized to the shaft, not a screwdriver and a prayer. On a 1972-era door, the shaft and drum are usually original dimensions, so we measure before we order rather than assume a stock size fits. Given the cold-severe climate here, we check the cable condition at the drum and the bottom bracket for rust pitting - cold cycling plus moisture is what kills cable strands from the inside before they show on the surface. We replace both springs on a double door even when only one broke, because the surviving one is the same age and the same number of cycles from failing. Once the new springs are wound to the correct number of turns for the door's actual weight, we cycle the door by hand before we ever let the opener take it, checking balance at the halfway point. A door that's properly balanced should hold position on its own with the opener disconnected; if it doesn't, something else is still off.
Can You Do This Yourself
A torsion spring under tension can break a hand or worse if the winding bar slips - this is the one repair on a garage door we tell people flat out not to attempt without the right bars and a clamp on the door. Extension springs are lower-tension and some owners do manage a careful swap themselves, but on a double door with torsion hardware, which is most of what we see at a 1972 median build year, the honest advice is to call someone. If you're comfortable checking your own balance - disconnect the opener, lift the door halfway by hand, see if it holds - that's a fine way to confirm you actually have a spring problem before you book a truck for a 17-mile trip out from Beavercreek.
