You can eyeball toe in. I once worked at a place and that the only way we did it. As for the caster, it's not the angle that's important, it's the fact that both sides are the same. If it pulls one way with the camber and toe correct, then adjust the caster to remove the pull. Simple.
Quite honestly, I did not realize how heavy the door was. Plus the door was an early composition material that sucked in moisture and bacteria was actually feeding on the glue. It was a double width door using an extension spring which shows how poorly it was put up in the first place. Normally I was pretty handy... I put up my own garage door operator for example. But changing the spring almost cost me my head. No joke.
All this talk about garage doors kind of has me wondering... Another method of opening a garage door would be some sort of counterweight system... You don't hear much about them though... Seems like they would be a simplier solution since the only thing that might break over the years would be the cable... Of course, it would probably be best to have multiple counterweights since a single one could be rather eventful if it broke...
Have you seen the tolerance specifications on a modern car? You cannot eyeball any of these readings. Geez some of the German cars specify that you put sandbags in the seats before making the adjustments.
Well Jim,
There are those that should not touch anything. A neighbor released the brackets on his expansion springs with the door closed!!! Fortunate for him he had only minor injuries.
He is probably a guy who might reach under his mower with the engine running to see if the blade is turning. Etc. etc.
Only warning is to be real certain the door is blocked open and can't come down in any way. At least that is if you have a heavy door.
Glad to hear someone else uses a torch on their extension springs. I've done this for years with good results. Every spring that I've had break will do it at the same place - right in the area where the end of the spring was bent to form the loop used to attach the end of the spring to the attachment (an eye bolt in my case). I suspect that when these springs are manufactured, they aren't heated enough before the spring is bent to form the loop/hook. As with any spring steel, bending it to a small radius to form a nearly 90 degree bend will weaken/stress the steel at that point and that's where it will eventually break. I use a torch to heat that spot to red heat before rebending the hook on the end. Seems to work like a charm and those springs that I've heated and rebent are much less likely to break again at that spot, probably because the steel is well annealed at the bend.
On my garage doors, the extension spring is actually sagging from it own weight when the door is in the raised position, as I believe it should be. The motor has more than enough power to finish raising the door once two-thirds of the door has risen the horizontal position. When in the raised position, the springs are a piece of cake to remove and replace.
Harry
Possible but not practical versus extension or torsion springs.
A simple weight applies a constant force, which is not well matched to lifting a sectional door, which decreases in weight as it is lifted into the horizontal track. Springs happen to roughly match that proportionate behavior. While one can imagine a more complex system of weights that lifts proportionately to travel, it becomes Goldberg-esque.
You also have an inertia problem with weights that you don't have with springs. Garage doors are dangerous enough due to their moving mass, and you don't want to increase that.
After posting that, I did a quick search on the net... It seems that there are a few doors that use a counterweight system, but they're rather specialty type of doors... I don't think any of them were the typical 4 section metal doors... There were some 2 section (i.e. bifold) ones where the top and the bottom of the door is in a vertical track and the pivot point projects outwards as the door is opened... Kind of like the door on my hangar, but it doesn't have a counterweight... I had a cable break on it once and it was a very interesting experience as it hit my boat and pushed it into me so that I was pinned against the wall... It's about a 40 ft wide by perhaps 20 ft tall metaL door... When it falls, it is *very* loud...
Doors with counterbalance weights, commonly used in many carwashes, rely on the vertical lift type drums, snatch blocks and cable to offset the changes in weight as the door travels from a vertical position to horizontal. These doors are remarkably balanced throughout it's travel.
Rich ==================================== Garage Door Parts, LLC
Go to Lowes or Home Depot and have them install a torsion bar instead of springs.
Bulky, maybe. All you need is a series of weights on the cable that hit the ground as the door opens. An anchor chain, for instance. Or an eccentric pulley somewhere in the sequence. I don't think the inertia problem is real... The weights contribute to the inertia of the door only when it's opening. When it's closing, if you block the door, the weights will just coast, adding slack to the cable. As for the dealing with snapped cables, you could add the sort of cable-de-activated brakes they use on elevators, where a loose cable allows (brake shoes?) to engage the track, while a tight cable pulls them clear.
As I said, it is possible, just Goldberg-esque.
Neither of those solutions is particularly complicated, or mechanically unusual.
You are lost in naivete.
The torsion spring pair for my 238 lb single car door weighs 17 lbs.
Your counterweights would weigh, oh, at least 238 lbs.
At $3/lb lately for hardware, you are suggesting upwards of $1000 for a mechanism that replaces $50 worth of springs.
How much does a cubic foot of concrete weigh, and how much does it cost?
Not suitable as already explained. The naive idea was to use a metal chain.
No it was not explained. You flatly said weights were not suitable, but that was more than adequately refuted.
Concrete with aggregate weighs aproximately 140 pounds per cubic foot. It's also dirt cheap. You said weight of around 238 pounds was needed. Concrete seems like an excellent and economical choice. Probably cheaper than your 17 pounds of springs. Lets see... you said that "hardware" costs around $3 a pound. so your springs would run $41. How much would 1.7 cubic feet (238 pounds) of concrete cost? Your wild statement about hardware costing $1000 being needed was as foolish and unsupportable as most of the things you post in usenet.
Ah. So your complaint is based on the theory that "goldberg-esque" is a synonym for "expensive"?
No. Already explained why a constant-force weight was unsuitable.
No. Cost and complexity correlate.
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