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I'm trying to help my brother with a garage door opener installation. Normally this would be pretty straightforward, but his garage has a feature/obstacle I've never seen before. The door installer used a piece of angle iron as a support for the door spring. Unfortunately, it's in the same place where the opener's track is supposed to attach to the door header.

Why would the spring need a support like this? And how should we work around it when installing the opener?

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    You know that spring has a murderous amount of torque on it. Like, can literally kill you. Did you think it was just setting there? I would think more that the angle iron is not enough.... and attached to a cripple wall to boot! – Harper - Reinstate Monica May 17 '18 at 18:00
  • I don’t have much expert knowledge here, but I’ve seen door operators not on center before. Can you relocate the opener? – Tyson May 17 '18 at 18:00
  • @Harper Other garage door springs I've seen are attached directly to the door header with lag screws. I've never seen the angle iron used this way before. That being said, I have no plans to mess with the spring. I just need a way to work around it. – mrog May 17 '18 at 19:50
  • @Tyson Good question. If it can be installed off-center, I suspect we'd need to reinforce the door somehow at the place where the opener connects to it. I'll look into that. – mrog May 17 '18 at 19:52
  • The spring doesn't need to be on center, but it does need to be attached to really beefy structure. Sounds like in this case the available joist was on/near center, so the spring had to be. – Harper - Reinstate Monica May 17 '18 at 19:59

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