Question:
I read friction would be detrimental and non-detergent 30W would be
correct. Neighbor didn't lube the pivot point for large wood slab
door and had it on top of the car as he backed out. Our pivot POINTS
get annual lubing. Wish we could do similar things for knees, wrists,
shoulders,etc...Any comments about lubing the springs?
Answer:
In summary, I labored from about 3 pm to nightfall today in order to perform
my very first sectional overhead garage door torsion spring counterbalance
replacement task. (Research took more than a week, but, that was fun, thanks
mostly to all of you who volunteered to advise me so kindly!)
The garage door now opens fine. As a bonus, it seems to make MUCH less noise
when the electric garage door opener (aka GDO) runs than it did before
(I'm not sure exactly why the GDO would sound smoother & quieter though.)
As only one counterbalance torsion spring was originally installed, I was
afraid to replace that with two springs. Nothing in this thread gave me
any calculations that I could follow in their footsteps to replace the
single-spring style with a dual-spring style.
I vaguely recall that, in metal fatigue, the number of stress cycles before
failure increases exponentially as the loading is decreased. So sharing the
load between two springs *should* greatly increase their service lives. Of
course, this assumes there are no flaws in the metal which may be a stretch.
Also, that lighter springs were not used because they are paired.
My own double door has two springs. The first failed at four years.
