solarbird | surprise spring parts (Reply)

Anna and I were getting ready to bike first to exercise then to go to the grocery and I noticed this metal ring on the floor of the garage and looked at it and thought, “uh, that looks automotive,” which was bad given it was next to Housemate Paul’s car.

So I looked at it and looked at his car and didn’t see anything before I turned to where Anna had already gone outside with her bike, and that’s when I saw the big garage spring just kind of dangling there by the door – a place it should certainly never be.

(That’s bad.)

You know the little coils at the end of a long spring that is like at 90 degrees from the rest of the spring, and that’s where you hook it onto things if you’re using the spring that way? That’s what had broken off.

So I left it for the moment, but once we got back I started working on it, and it took a few tries but I settled on something which I think is a pretty good fix. The first couple of fixes absolutely worked, but I got worried about the tension strength and how it would interact with edges of connected materials. The spring does have a little bit of an arch now, but I think that’s actually okay? I mean, before, it had a 90-degree turn in the metal, and, well, that made fools of us all, now, didn’t it.

everything here is original except the D-shaped, uh… hook? with the two nuts. Originally the S-hook was just hooked onto the structural metal and you can see how it kind of marked it up, so I went with better.

I also shortened the run a little bit to make up for the reduced spring length, and I got the tension pretty well equal with the rest of the springs. The door opens and closes easily now. But if I’m hideously wrong about something for a very specific reason, let me know.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.