How to tell an off-track door from a broken spring
Start by looking, not pulling. If the door is sitting level but will not lift and feels like dead weight, and you can see a two-inch gap in the spring coil on the shaft above the door, you have a broken spring. If instead the door is sitting crooked, leaning into the garage, or jammed at an angle in the tracks, it has come off the track. One is a balance problem and the other is a guidance problem, and they are fixed differently. One more quick check helps before you call. Pull the manual release cord to disconnect the opener, then try to lift the door a few inches by hand. If it rises but feels extremely heavy while staying level in the tracks, that points to a broken spring. If it catches, drags on one side, or will not move because it is binding in the track, that points to an off-track door. Either way, stop after that gentle test and do not keep pulling.
What causes each problem?
A spring breaks from age and cycle count. After enough open-and-close cycles the steel fatigues and snaps, often with a loud bang. An off-track door usually has a different trigger: a broken lift cable, a worn or shattered roller, or an impact from a car bumping the door. Sometimes a broken spring and an off-track door happen together, because the sudden drop from a snapped spring can pull the door out of the track.
Why you should not force the door
With either problem, forcing the door does real damage. Running the opener on a door with a broken spring can burn out the opener or drop the door. Pulling on a door that is off track can bend the track further, kink the panels, or bring the whole door down. Neither problem gets cheaper by trying to muscle through it. The safe move is to leave the door where it is and call a technician.
Getting a same-day fix in Dunwoody
Both repairs are same-day jobs when the parts are on the truck. For a broken spring, we replace the pair, wind them to the correct tension, and rebalance the door, as covered on our spring repair page. For an off-track door, we release the tension safely, reset the door, and fix the roller, cable, or bent track that caused it, which our off-track repair page explains. The most important thing either way is not to keep operating the door. A five-minute look tells you which problem you have, and a phone call gets it fixed before a small failure turns into a bent door or a burned-out opener.
Door stuck in Dunwoody? Call (470) 558-1427 for same-day service and an up-front price.