[Coronita]

[quote=ltsdd]This is one of those repairs that I wouldn’t recommend to DIY. I had mine replaced a few years back at $90/spring + $75 labor. The safety risk alone was enough to convince me to pay an extra $100 bucks or so to have it done by a professional. Also, I know for sure that I wouldn’t know what the proper tension to put on the springs for it to operate correctly and safely.[/quote]

It’s actually pretty easy to figure out the correct tension now that I’ve done it.Open the garage door about 3 feet. If it stays without moving, it’s about right. Then open the door fully. Check if the two side pulleys still have tension. IF they are really loose or unraveled, the tension isn’t correct.

I think the two biggest safety thing to keep in mind is.

(1) when you wind the spring, don’t stand right in front of the spring and don’t get in the way of the winding bars if you lose your grip and it springs back.

(2) Go overboard and wear a motorcycle or auto racing helmet on top of safety glasses that you should also wear.

I’ve done a lot worse at other things. When I was torquing down my miata’s supercharger, I managed to jam my long/heavy torque wrench on a bolt. I started to pull really hard to get it out, and then when it was still jammed, I used all my strength to pull it out. Obviously, me winning the darwin award that evening, I didn’t have my safety glasses on, and that wrench came loose and went full speed right into my face and hit my upper left eyelid. Fortunately, I only ended up with a big bruise on sclera, and didn’t hit my pupil or my iris.
It was kinda cool, I didn’t know you can get a bruise on the eyeball. The eye doctor said i was lucky I didn’t it it lower. Looking back at it, I think this would have been one of those Darwin YouTube videos that ends with me saying “hey, watch this…”

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[quote=zk]Yeah, if you’re planning on being there a while, having a backup wouldn’t hurt. My spring was only 4 1/2 years old. But it was installed by Pardee, so it’s possible it wasn’t done correctly. If you get a backup, might as well get some purpose-made winding bars while you’re at it. Cheap insurance against an accident caused by an incorrect bar slipping out.[/quote]

Wow. Yours broke in 4 years? I think mine were still original for about 10… I guess they don’t make springs like they use to. Which online store did you order from? The same one as the guy in the youtube video?

[Coronita]

[quote=zk]Dang, flu, too bad I didn’t see this a couple days earlier; I would’ve recommended that same video. My spring busted a couple weeks ago and I went (superhero voice) TO THE INTERNET!!. Found that very video, ordered the springs and the winding bars online, and did it myself. $43 for the two springs and the winding bars. They bungled the shipping, and I had to wait a week and a half, but other than that it worked out good.

In any case, for anyone else considering the project, I second the recommendation of that video. The guy shows you everything you need to know to do it safely, and he has a nice demeanor. Also, the winding bars are quite inexpensive, and I would highly recommend buying a pair. Winding the springs, especially near the end when they’re really tight, is a tad unnerving, especially having heard the stories, and knowing I had the right tools made me more confident that I wasn’t going to screw it up. I didn’t wear a helmet, but only because I didn’t think of it. That’s a pretty good idea.[/quote]

Thanks ZK. I was in such a hurry I didn’t have time to order and wait since both of my cars were in the garage, and I don’t want to put mileage on the other two parked outside… So I tried to buy the springs locally, and boy was it expensive. I paid $86 for 1 spring, while online I could have bought a pair for much less. Oh well…. I just wanted to get it done. I’m thinking of maybe ordering a pair for backup, because while they are suppose to last about 6+ years, when they do break, it stinks, especially if you only have one… Home depot also sells springs via custom order, and it takes about a 1 to 2 weeks.

[Coronita]

My comments below

[quote]

I’m selling it for a couple of reasons:

1. I’ve had enough of being a landlord.

[/quote]

Fair enough. What specifically bothers you about it?

[quote]

2. For the last 6 months I’ve been losing close to $200/month on the rental due to tax/escrow increases over the years. I had long term tenants and did not increase the rent.

[/quote]

Well, are you talking about just that your cash flow is negative $200/month, or is it you are really $200/month, once you factor in that as part of your payments, the tenant is paying the principal part of your mortage too.

[quote]

My current/primary house needs work. I bought it fairly cheap during the housing crisis years.

My plan was to sell both properties and buy a house that doesn’t need improvements. I’m also considering buying a house closer to work.

I do have enough equity to lower the price – and yet I’m not desperate to sell (yet).

A house very close to mine but 300+ sq ft smaller just sold in 5 days for 330k. It was a single story though.[/quote]

With the new adjusted rent, are you going to be cash flow+?

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[quote=paramount][quote=FlyerInHi]Doesn’t sound like he needs/really wants to sell.

I see nothing wrong with pricing it above market. Someone might bite. It only takes one buyer. It’s a seller’s market after all.[/quote]

That was my thought – I’m 5k over the zillow estimate.

What I’m runing up against is the active rental season. Once September hits (or school starts) it get harder and harder to find a tenant and I might have to lower the rent or standards.

I’m thinking of lowering the price 10k for the weekend to see what happens. After that on Monday it goes back on the rental market.[/quote]

I never understood why people price above market only to reduce it. Doesn’t that just send a bad message? It seems like it would be more effective to price at market, get a bunch of bids, and play them off each other.

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[quote=kev374]well, is this work that hard that it commands quarter million dollars in salary a year?[/quote]

Its hard if you haven’t done it and are trying to do it now. Hard or no hard is not the issue.

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[quote=Clifford][quote=flu]There’s no way in hell Q is a worse place to work than some of the defense companies that my colleagues worked at, one in particular in Rancho Bernardo. Just saying…[/quote]

flu, are you referring to BAE Systems ?[/quote]

No comment.

[Coronita]

[quote=no_such_reality]ERP typically hits Finance and the core business Operations.

Those same groups, typically try to penny pinch on other IT projects and typically then get mediocre results. So when it comes to their primary work flow tool, they feel like they need to buy quality.

The projects often go completely off the rails and projects then get sponsored to fix the problem with the app affecting the core business, they’ll pay even more for that.

Honestly, I’ve seen companies just lose their minds with major ERP implementations, literally, little companies, sub-billion, sub-$500 million spending $20-$30 million on ERP armies of off-shore consultants 70-80 developers customize code to work. Insanity. And of course, it works like a cobbled together mess because the businesss refuses to think that they don’t have a ‘best practice’ that they are insisting on being customised.

But in the end, the companies go with the ‘safe’ big house consulting solution, pay through the nose for it and the houses know it, so that decision makers minimize being the scapegoat for what ultimately will be a failed massive expenditure, because many business stakeholders approach it with the same realism that approach things like dieting.

/cyncism.

And a jaded IT guy would ask if $200K is enough to watch a slow motion train wreck unfurl over a year knowing the whole time, you’ll be the primary target of blame and will have to defend it and fight to then continue getting your company paid?[/quote]

Funny part is that about 10 years ago, I was at a then startup company that IPOed that was providing EAI/B2B integration to such ERP systems. We built datasource adapters to SAP using ABAP and SAP IDocs to our integration server that allowed people to use a GUI to map data from SAP ABAP calls and IDocs to other data types (for example, a relational database, or another backoffice system). We also included a workflow and data transformation engine. Company made good money doing this. The pitch was you didn’t need a specialized SAP consultant to do this…Well sort of… You needed a consultant familiar with our EAI platform that was costing about the same as the ERP consultants did…LOL…So I think most companies ended up ditching these middlemen products, especially after the big companies (SAP, Oracle,etc) started to provide much cleaner interfaces to expose their data.

Those SAP $200k consulting jobs aren’t going away anytime soon. Just like you still have people hiring to do COBOL.

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Not many people know how to do it. Specialized skillset.

$200k was what SAP consultants were getting 10 years ago too.

[Coronita]

Maybe you’re asking too much?

[Coronita]

Isn’t Musk an ass too?
Wasn’t Jobs an ass?

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Paramount: Yes, messing with torsion springs will get you if you are not careful. Need correct tools too.

Flu: Not sure what you mean balance. Are they the same diameter? Measure the inside drum dia. where the cable winds. Door level? Door down, carefully back off all spring tension, slack drum bolts, hand turn enough to take slack out, tighter bolts and repeat other side. Equal turns on each side of spring ( if dual springs ). Tension enough to hold door in any position without connection to opener.[/quote]

The door was slightly tilted on one side with one side’s pulley being really slack and the other side being really taunt. I think what happened was the first time, I didn’t wind the spring tight enough, and then when I fully opened the garage door, there wasn’t enough tension in one of the cables on one side, so it unraveled, I wound it back up while the door was open, and then when I closed it, the door ended up closing tilted… I ended up closing the door, getting a vise grip to hold the spring tension in place against the wall, while I loosened both pulleys to straighten both sides of the cable. And then I cranked cranked the spring a few more times so that when it was fully open, it still created some tension on the cables on both sides.

One other thing I noticed. My garage door only has one torsen spring. But a lot of places are recommending converting it into a two torsen spring (left and right side), I guess so it reduces the load on each spring, giving a longer spring life… I didn’t think about that , but too late.
Oh well. My last spring lasted about 10 years.

[Coronita]

Success!!!!

I would not succumb to defeat so I spent early morning watching this youtube video.

And I was able to my garage door to align properly. Turns out I didn’t wind the spring enough and the pulleys were coming loose after I fully opened the garage.

Now my garage runs more smooth then before because I took the time to actually balance the door so it doesn’t slam shut on the way down, nor does it spring open on the way up.

This didn’t turn out to be rocket science. Stuffing a supercharger in a miata is more involved. However, you do need to be careful with winding the spring, since if you don’t do it with a secure, thick steel bar or “winding levers”, you can seriously get hurt (like lose a finger or worse). They make these bars to wind springs

But I didn’t have them handy, so I went to the local hardware store and just bought long steel bars that fit in the winding holes. They need to be about 2-3 feet long (3 feet is good for more torque). The idea is use one to crank the spring a quarter turn, and then you you stick the other one underneath and let it rest against the garage door to hold the spring tension in place, while you remove the first bar. And then, you crank another quarter turn, and repeat the process a few times. It took me about 29 quarter turns to get the right tension, and then about 2 quarter turns after to fine tune it. I had to try it a couple of times to get a perfect balance.

I think why a lot of people probably get hurt is they skimp on getting the right steel bars to turn the spring. I read some people try to use screwdrivers and others use hollow aluminum shafts….Uh, probably not the smartest thing for those people to do. Also, as an amateur, I wore a pair of safety glasses, and then on top of that, I worn my helmet for racing. (Motorcycle helment should work too)….Perhaps that was overkill, but I didn’t want the loaded spring to accidentally unravel on me and launch a steel rod into my face.

Would I do this for a rental property? Probably not. I wouldn’t want the liability. But for my own home, I figure I can probably get another 6-7 years before I have to do it again.

Thanks Hobbie for the links and the help.

I guess if I get laidoff as a software enginerd, I can always start my own garage door service company, lol.

[Coronita]

Ok. I give up on this one. I got the spring on, I just can’t get the damn pulleys on both sides to balance. And I don’t feel like having one of the bars I use to torque up the spring to go flying into my body (I’m wearing my auto racing helmet to protect my face, lol)….Anyway, time to folk over the $200 or so…Grr…..

[Coronita]

[quote=kev374]
Unfortunately too many of the people in this country are bleeding heart liberals who want to give the entire world everything, if that is the case, then you have no right to complain when your salary eventually goes to half and you can’t get a job!!![/quote]

Lol. I think you have this point wrong.
The bleeding heart liberals aren’t the ones supporting H1-Bs. I think this thing is party agnostic. I see plenty of liberals up in arms about H1-Bs as I see as I see conservatives.

[Author]

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