What You Pay
There's no single number we can give you before we see the door, because what you pay depends on what's actually on the wall: torsion springs versus the older extension-spring setups still common on Hudson garages built around 1983, single door versus double, and whether the drums, cables, or bearing plates went with the spring when it snapped. A single torsion spring on a standard door is a different job than a double-spring double-door setup where one side let go and stressed the other. We quote once we've measured the wire gauge, coil diameter, and door weight in front of us, not off a phone description. What we can tell you is that a spring job on its own, without a full opener or track replacement, is a same-visit repair, we don't have to order the spring itself for a standard-size residential door.
One honest limitation: if the door has sagged or twisted from years of running on a worn track with a weak spring, fixing the spring alone won't fix the door. We'll tell you straight if the spring is the cheap part of a bigger problem, rather than replace it and have you call us back in a month.
Stocked Parts
Hudson's housing mostly went up in the early-to-mid 1980s, which means a lot of garages here still have the 7-foot single or double doors standard to that build era, 9x7 single or 16x7 double, steel sectional panels, torsion springs mounted on a center bearing plate above the door. We keep torsion springs in the common wire sizes and wind lengths for those dimensions on the truck, along with standard cable, rollers, and drums, so most of these jobs close out in one visit.
What we don't carry as standard stock is anything custom, an oversize door, a spring wound to a non-standard length, or hardware for a door that's been modified or replaced piecemeal over 40 years. If your garage has had a non-original door swapped in at some point, we may need to measure and order rather than fix it off the truck that day. We'll know within a few minutes of looking at the spring which situation you're in.
What You Are Seeing
On a house from Hudson's typical build era, a broken spring usually announces itself the same way: the door won't lift past a few inches, or it lifts and then drops like the weight came off, because it did. If you hear a loud bang from the garage, often mistaken for something falling or a car backfiring, that's very often a torsion spring letting go under tension. Look at the spring itself, mounted above the door on the shaft: a broken one shows a visible gap in the coil, sometimes with the two ends twisted apart.
On the older extension-spring setups you still find on some doors from this period, springs running parallel to the horizontal track instead of above the door, a break shows up as a stretched or dangling spring at the top of each track, and the door usually won't move at all with the opener, or it strains and stalls. Either way, don't try to force the door with the opener once you notice it's fighting. That's how a cable snaps or a track bends, and now it's two repairs instead of one.
The Complications
Hudson sits in a mild temperate band, so we're not dealing with the freeze-thaw cycling that snaps springs early in colder climates, the wire fatigue here comes from years of daily use and humidity, not temperature swings. That's a small advantage: springs in this area often last out their full cycle life rather than failing early from cold-weather stress.
The complication we do run into is age-mismatched hardware. On a door original to a house built around 1983, you'll sometimes find a spring that's been replaced once already, with a bracket or drum that doesn't quite match current standard parts, a previous repair done with whatever was on hand at the time. That's not a Hudson-specific defect, it's just what 40 years of ownership turnover does to a garage. It means every job starts with us checking that the hardware around the spring is actually original-spec or matching before we quote the fix, because a spring sized wrong for its drum will fail again fast.
What the Fix Involves
We start by releasing tension on the existing spring safely with winding bars, this is the step that hurts people who try it themselves, because a wound torsion spring holds real force. Once it's off, we check the shaft, bearing plates, cable, and drums for wear, since a spring rarely breaks in isolation on a door that's seeing regular daily use. If those parts are original to a door from the early '80s, they've often earned their retirement alongside the spring.
We install the new spring matched to your door's weight and size, wind it to the correct tension, and cycle the door several times by hand before handing it back to the opener, checking balance the whole way. A properly balanced door should sit still at any point when disconnected from the opener, if it drifts up or down, the spring tension isn't right yet and we adjust before we call it done. We travel the roughly 8 miles from New Port Richey for these calls, so we schedule Hudson jobs together with other stops in the area when we can.
Other services in this area
Questions, answered
Why did my garage door spring break with no warning?
Torsion springs have a rated number of open-close cycles, and on a door that's been in daily use for decades, that number eventually runs out regardless of the weather. There's usually no dramatic cause, the spring simply reaches the end of its wire's fatigue life and lets go, often on an otherwise ordinary morning.
Can I replace one spring on a double door and leave the other?
You can, but we don't recommend it. If one spring failed from age, the other is close behind on the same cycle count, and replacing them as a pair keeps the door balanced evenly on both sides. Mismatched spring age is one of the more common reasons we get a second call a few months later.
Do you carry the right spring size for older Hudson garages?
For standard 9x7 and 16x7 doors typical of Hudson's early-1980s housing stock, yes, we stock common torsion spring sizes and can usually finish the job in one visit. Custom or non-standard door sizes sometimes require ordering, which we'll confirm once we've measured the shaft and coil.
Is it cheaper to fix the spring or replace the whole door?
If the door panels, track, and opener are otherwise sound, a spring repair is almost always the cheaper and faster answer. Replacement only makes sense when the door itself has sagged, rusted through, or the panels no longer sit flush, spring failure alone doesn't mean the door needs replacing.
Tell Us What the Door Is Doing
Call and we'll ask a few questions before a truck leaves, then give you a straight answer on repair versus replace.