Wayne Dalton TorqueMaster Springs: What They Are and What to Do When One Breaks

Look above the door. A standard torsion setup has one or two large coil springs on a bar, out in the open. A TorqueMaster door has a plain steel tube with the springs inside it, so there's nothing to see but the tube.

At each end of the tube is a winding unit on the end bracket. The original TorqueMaster One has a round winding end. The later TorqueMaster Plus has a hexagonal winding end and a small counter wheel that counts the turns. The cable drums are flat and sit close to the brackets. The door itself is a Wayne Dalton, usually marked on the inside of a section or the label at the bottom.

You usually can't see it. The gap in the coil that gives away a broken standard spring is hidden inside the tube.

The signs are what the door does. There's a bang from the garage. The opener lifts the door a few inches and stops or reverses. The door is dead weight by hand. On a single-spring door, both lift cables go slack at once. On a two-spring door the opener may still move the door slowly and with a lot of strain, which is hard on the opener's gear. The broken spring guide covers what to do in the meantime, which is mostly: don't keep running it.

It's what we recommend on most TorqueMaster calls. A replacement TorqueMaster spring is a proprietary part sized to the door model, and when it fails again you're back in the same place with the same wait for parts.

A conversion removes the tube and the winders and fits a standard torsion shaft, springs, end bearing plates, a centre bracket, cable drums, and cables above the same door. The door, the tracks, and the opener stay as they are. Standard springs come in a range of sizes and cycle ratings that we carry, so the repair is done in one visit, and any garage door company can service the setup afterward. The price is usually close to a like-for-like repair, and we quote both so you can see the difference.

If you'd rather keep the TorqueMaster system, say so when you book and we'll quote it like-for-like.

Wayne Dalton designed TorqueMaster to be wound with a drill or a socket wrench, and some owners have done it. We still advise against it.

The springs store the same energy as any spring that lifts a 150 to 400 pound door, and much of the risk is in the counter wheel, cable, and drum steps rather than the winding itself. A door that drops or a cable that lets go during the job can break fingers or worse. We'd rather you spend the call on a setup that doesn't need doing again.