Highland Park, Coppell

Spring Repair for Highland Park's 1970s Garage Doors

Homes in Highland Park mostly went up around 1973, which means older extension spring setups. Coppell Garage Door Co repairs and replaces them, 14 miles out.

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Spring Repair for Highland Park's 1970s Garage Doors in Coppell

Local causes

Why It Happens Here

Highland Park's housing stock centers on 1973, a good two decades older than the median build year across the rest of our service area. That matters for springs. Doors going up in the early-to-mid 1970s were almost always set up with extension springs mounted along the horizontal tracks, not torsion springs over the header. Extension setups run hotter under repeated cycling, stretch out of temper faster, and use safety cables that a lot of original installs never had added later. Fifty years on, those springs aren't failing because anyone did anything wrong. They're failing because that's what steel under constant tension does on a house this old. We still see plenty of original hardware here that's never been touched, which is a different failure pattern than a torsion spring going in a newer build. When we get a call from this area, we come expecting extension coils and older cable anchors, not the torsion drums that dominate newer construction elsewhere in the territory.

Warning signs

How It Shows Up

The door won't lift, or it lifts about six inches and stalls. Sometimes you hear the bang first, a spring letting go while the door sits closed.

Uneven spring failure

On an extension-spring door, a broken spring often lets one side of the door hang lower than the other, since the two springs rarely fail at the same moment.

Safety cable protection

If there's no safety cable running through the spring, a snapped coil can whip and hit the track or nearby framing. Openers on these older doors sometimes keep trying to lift after a spring breaks, which strains the drive gear.

Manual lift difficulty

If you notice the door suddenly feels twice as heavy to lift by hand, that's the spring, not the opener, and it's worth shutting the opener off until someone looks at it.

Booking

How to Book

We travel from Coppell, about 14 miles out to Highland Park, so we schedule the trip rather than dispatch on the fly. Call and describe what the door's doing - stalled partway, one side low, a bang you heard - and that tells us whether to bring extension coils, cable, or both. We don't keep a branch or crew stationed in Highland Park; every job here is routed from Coppell, so booking ahead gets you a tighter window than a same-day ask. See [more on how we cover this area](/near/highland-park/), or if you're weighing spring repair against other door work, our [main spring repair page for Coppell](/garage-door-spring-repair-coppell-tx) covers the broader service.

DIY or pro

The DIY Question

Don't do this one yourself. Extension springs store less energy per coil than torsion springs, but they're still under load that can put a coil through a windshield or a hand.

Corroded pulley hardware

On a house built in 1973, there's also a decent chance the cable and pulley hardware is original, meaning it's had fifty years to corrode at the anchor points - not something you want to discover mid-repair.

Spring tension safety

If you're comfortable and it's just a matter of lubricating rollers or tightening a loose bracket, fine. Spring tension itself isn't a homeowner job, full stop, regardless of the house's age.

Downtime

How Long You Are Without the Door

Once we're on site, swapping a broken extension spring is usually a same-visit fix - the work itself doesn't take long. The variable here is parts. If your hardware is original 1970s stock, matching coil length and wire gauge sometimes means we're not pulling it off a standard shelf, which can add a day or two versus a newer door where the parts are common stock. We'll tell you on the call or at the door which situation you're in before we commit to a return trip.

Questions

Common questions

Why do older Highland Park doors use extension springs instead of torsion springs?

Torsion springs mounted over the header became standard later; doors built in the early 1970s, like most of the housing here, were commonly fitted with extension springs running along the horizontal tracks instead. Both work, but extension setups are more visible and, on original hardware this old, more likely to be due for replacement.

Is a broken spring on an older door more dangerous?

It can be, if the original install never included a safety cable through the spring. A snapped coil without a cable can whip loose. If your door's from the early '70s and you're not sure it has one, that's worth checking, or having checked, before the spring fails on its own.

Do you keep a crew based in Highland Park?

No. We run out of Coppell, about 14 miles away, and schedule Highland Park calls as trips rather than same-day dispatch. Booking a bit ahead usually gets you a tighter arrival window than calling last minute.

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