Hardware Essentials 851838 Stainless Steel Self-Closing Gate Spring, Adjustable Tension, 12 Inch

A little bit of common sense goes a long way with this item, but works great install was pretty easy.

Works exactly as it should!

Believe the one star reviews. You're supposed to apply tension to the spring by turning the top end, but as soon as you do, the spring breaks free at the bottom, preventing you from tightening the spring at all.The hex (nut?) at the bottom should be snug against the bracket, welded to it, or both to keep it from turning. Instead it appears to be held in place only by some mixture of hope and school glue. But a stainless gate closing spring of this type at your local hardware store would cost at least twice as much and this defect just isn't that hard to fix.What you need is to add something very much like the locking pin that is provided for use at the top end of the spring to hold the bottom end in place too. I had some short pieces of bar stock roughly 1/8" thick by 3/4" wide. A 1/8-1/4" long strip of that would have worked fine, but it was too short to cut on a table saw and I was too lazy to clamp it and cut it with a grinder or hacksaw, so I just broke a piece off of an extra Allen wrench of the right size and jammed it in there. Once the spring is tight, your home-made pin shouldn't fall out.If they provided two of the pins, this thing would be close to perfect.

Works well .. best part is that it’s stainless steel..

Among the most satisfactory purchases I have made in a while, these closers seem to be holding up. Check back in a couple of years.

This is one of the worst engineered products I've had the misfortune of having to install. The spring has an adjustable nut at the top end, and a fixed nut at the bottom. After the spring has been screwed into place, the proper tension must be preloaded by tightening the top nut, which is then held in place by small metal plate that slides between the nut and the bracket. But as a previous reviewer noted, there is nothing to stop the "fixed" nut at the bottom from turning -- which it does the first time the gate is opened. The result is that the preloaded tension is lost, and the spring will no longer close the gate.The only solution is to jury-rig something that will keep the lower nut from turning when the spring is further compressed by the opening of the gate. I found that shoving a couple of 5d finish nails between the nut head and the bracket seems to give at least temporary relief. But honestly, what kind of company would release a product that cannot possibly work as sold?Oh, one last thing: although the gate closes nicely when it is released from a fully open, or even half open, position, if it is stopped a few inches short of fully closed and then released, it just sits there. So although most of the time it will do the job, you can't fully rely on it. Bottom line: a big thumbs down for this Hillman product.

This is so much nicer than the ubiquitous black ones. it comes with a shim to hold the pre-load once you set it. However mine needed one on the other end to keep that hex from turning in the bracket too. Maybe mine was misassembled, but a little 1/8x1/4x1" block fixed mine. you could easily wedge a #8 nut in there instead, it's underneath so it doesn't show.

As many people have written about: It has a major flaw. The flaw is easily correct but it is frustrating when you buy and new relatively inexpensive item that could easily have been made better. The flaw is the bottom bolt sits too far away from the "L" attachment bracket. The lower bolt appears to only glued and will spin loose with even a small amount of pressure. This renders the product useless. An easy fix is to place a small piece of spacer between the bottom bolt and the "l" hanger and glue it in place. This works as a jam and allows you to be tighten the tensioner bolt on top and install the shim stop.