Garage Door Spring Broke With Your Car Inside? What to Do Next

You heard a bang from the garage. Now the opener lifts the door a few inches and gives up, or does not move it at all, and your car is on the wrong side of it.

That is usually a broken spring. Replacing one is routine work for a technician. The risky part is the wait before the repair, when a rushed decision can hurt someone or damage more of the door. This guide covers that part: how to confirm what happened, what to leave alone, and how to get on with your day. For the repair itself, see our broken garage door spring page.

How to confirm the spring is broken (look, do not touch)

Most sectional garage doors use torsion springs: one or two tightly wound coils on a steel shaft across the wall above the closed door.

• A gap in the coil. Look along the coil. A broken torsion spring is in two pieces, with a gap between them.
• Loose cables. The lift cables at the sides of the door may hang slack or drop off their drums.
• An opener that strains. It lifts the door a few inches and stops, or the door goes up crooked.

Some doors use extension springs instead, which run along the horizontal tracks on each side. Look for one that is hanging loose or has come apart.

Why the door is suddenly so heavy

The opener does not lift your garage door. The springs do. They are wound to balance the door’s weight, so that a working door can be raised by hand with little effort and the opener only has to move it along.

Take the spring away and all of that weight is back. A data sheet from DASMA, the door manufacturers’ association, puts garage doors anywhere from about 90 pounds to more than 500, depending on size and construction. That is why the opener stalls, and why a door with a broken spring can drop like a dead weight if it is released while open.

What not to do

1. Do not keep pressing the opener button. An opener is designed to move a balanced door, not to carry a heavy one. Running it against a dead weight risks damaging both the opener and the door.
2. Do not pull the red release cord on an open or half-open door. Opener manuals warn that with a weak or broken spring, a released door can fall rapidly. If the door is fully closed, leave it closed.
3. Do not loosen, unwind or remove the springs, the cables or the bottom brackets. These parts are under extreme tension, even when one spring has failed. Doors carry a warning tag about it for a reason: this is work for a trained technician with the right tools.
4. Do not prop the door open with a ladder or a length of lumber and drive under it.

“But I need my car”: can I open the door with a broken spring?

Here is what to do, and what not to do.

Leave it and get a ride. A neighbor, a second car, a rideshare. The car is safe where it is, and so is the closed door.

Tell the company a car is trapped when you call, and ask whether the spring can be replaced with the car where it is.

Do not make it a two-person lift. You will find videos of people heaving a spring-less door overhead and clamping it open. With a broken spring, nothing is holding that weight but the people under it and whatever they clamped to the track. DASMA says not to operate a door with a broken spring until the spring has been replaced, and we agree.

Questions to ask before you approve a spring replacement

These are fair questions to ask any company before the work starts.

• Are the new springs sized for this door? Springs are matched to the door’s weight. Ask how the company works out which spring your door needs.
• If the door has two springs, will both be replaced? DASMA recommends replacing both even when only one has broken. The second spring has usually done the same work, and when it breaks it can damage other parts.
• What cycle rating are the new springs? One cycle is one open and one close. Door makers such as Clopay and Amarr say most residential springs are designed for about 10,000 cycles. Some makers quote more for torsion springs, and higher-cycle springs can be ordered. A household that opens the door eight times a day uses those cycles twice as fast as one that opens it four times, so heavy users should ask about higher-cycle springs.
• Will the door be balanced and tested afterward? After the springs are set, the door should stay in place when it is lifted halfway by hand, and the opener’s safety reversal should be tested before the technician leaves.
• Can I see the old parts? It is reasonable to ask to see what came off the door.

Springs wear out with use. Sometimes there are warning signs first. Our guide to the signs that springs are failing explains what to watch for.

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to leave the door closed until the repair?

Yes. A closed door with a broken spring stays closed. If you can reach the opener’s plug safely, unplug it so nobody runs it out of habit. Otherwise tape a note over the wall button. Use the house door in the meantime.

One of my two springs broke and the door still moves. Can I keep using it?

No. DASMA’s guidance is not to operate a door with a broken spring, and that includes a door with one spring left. Stop using it until it has been repaired.

Can a broken spring damage my opener?

Yes, if you keep running it. We cover this in will a broken garage door spring hurt your opener.

What if the door is stuck open instead of closed?

That needs a different approach, because the house is open too. See what to do when a garage door is stuck open.