Nuvo Iron SCGS13BLK 13" Self Closing Gate Spring, Black

EXTREMELY poor instructions. I had an experienced handyman assist me, but the paper instructionsStep 1.were so poor even he couldn't figure them out. So much for ten minute installation!Step 2.We pulled up instructions online for help only to find they repeated the paper ones!Step 3 was utube which was helpful in installing. It really is a great device and we love it. If I had installed it by myself using these instructions I would have totally messed it up. Thankfully, my friend had seen one that was already installed correctly and we used that as a guide.

It is the design of this gate spring that makes it stand out. Other springs just have the bottom nut squeezed into the spring (which can certainly come loose). This design has a rigid bottom with a pin sticking out to anchor it. Very sound construction. Other designs have you using a wrench to turn the top nut so that you can squeeze a metal spacer into the space between the nut and the face plate. In my hands this design was very difficult to install. This gate spring has a capstan drive in which a supplied lever turns the nut so that the pin that will hold it at the correct tension can be installed. In my hands this was super easy. Without question I would purchase this item again.

Ok, first the good. The product does exactly what it says it does. I used this on a wooden deck gate that is ~3' tall by 5' wide. It is a moderately heavy gate. The device holds the gate closed perfectly (so our dogs will quit getting out so often!). Previously, the gate would bounce open off the latch and our dogs would then go roam the neighborhood :).The bad:The gate is held by a 4x4 post. Screwing the device to this part was not a problem; however, the gate is made with a 2x4 frame giving only around a 1.75" surface to attach the device to. Had to screw the device in with a little bit of angle to the screws, but again, this wasn't a problem. Worked great. What didn't work great was the key to hold the spring.The key would NOT stay in the key hole to hold the spring tension when I put it in the proper direction. The reason was that it would pry itself out a little at a time as the gate closed. This was exasperated by the key laying over the edge of the mounting bracket which tended to help pull the key out.To resolve the problem, I ground down the fat end (the one that SHOULD go into the hole). I put the key in backwards, and ground it down to a length that would land entirely on the metal mounting area. This made sure the key stayed put and fixed the issue completely.Adjustment was easy, and it is relatively discrete being black the same as my hinges on my white gate.

The media could not be loaded. I have a solid steel gate that is very heavy. Unfortunately when the pool guy goes through the gate he often leaves the it wide-open. I needed a mechanism to automatically close the gate. Because the gate is heavy I added a second spring when it wouldn’t close with one.The first spring took me longer to install but the second was completed in about 15 minutes since I knew what I was doing. I used a screw driver to rotate the knob to adjust the pin. Was not very difficult. I would highly recommend.

This was easy to install and adjust. Just watch a video on Youtube about a similar product and you'll see how to install it. I can't do anything around the house and I managed to install this without issue. Our gate now meets the 5" close test (it latches closed if opened 5").Definitely drill pilot holes for the screws. The screws are big (which is good for this purpose), but you'll have trouble screwing it in without a hole drilled.

Badly engineered product. I ordered this, mounted it, and the spring came off the tensioner as I tried to get it tight enough to work at all. I wrote them and got a replacement and I’m still very disappointed. 1) the ends of the spring are not secured into place on the brackets, it’s just a peg in a hole without reduced coil-per-inch at the ends or second anchoring holes, so instead of just swiveling, there is a lot of x- and y-axis play—you don’t get well directed tension in the spring, it can bow out every which way2) the instructions say to place the brackets an inch from the edges of the gate and frame, and with the wiggling mentioned before, there was absolutely no tension, I remounted a few times varying the angle and got at least a little function out of 45 degrees.3) didn’t see it mentioned anywhere, but the screws are TORX (star) head, where a Philips would have worked just fine—can’t tell you how much I find this to be a useless substitution—especially with how easily those are stripped WHEN YOU HAVE TO REMOUNT OVER AND OVER.I would recommend another brand.

In my case, the gate which I installed this on didn't lend itself very well to this style of spring but I was able to add some blocks of 2x4 to key areas to get this installed nicely. Something to keep in mind with this product is that it is significantly impacted by the weather outside (which stands to be expected, it is a spring after all). I find that during the cooler days the spring is under more tension and on warmer days less tension. It still gets the job mostly done, however, I purchased this product for the peace-of-mind of "knowing the gate is closed" which isn't always the case due to the above so I'm left still needing to ensure the gate is closed when letting the dog into the back yard. Additionally, I believe the weather fluctuations are the cause of my only other concern which is that the tension retaining dowel (of which two are included) has popped out of the housing randomly at least one time so far and been lost on the ground somewhere. Al of that being said, I feel like my particular situation is about 60% solved, so I give this product 3/5 stars (60%).