Door sitting lower on one side, a cable hanging loose, or frayed wire at the bottom bracket? Cables are cheap and they fail slowly, which means this is the repair most worth catching early.
The lift cables run from a drum at the top of the door down to a bracket at the very bottom corner. That bottom few inches is the lowest point on the whole assembly, which in a Michigan winter is exactly where salt water collects. Slush drops off the car, melts on the slab, and pools right where the cable anchors.
The result is that cables in West Michigan almost always fail at the bottom, and they almost always give warning. A cable does not snap out of nowhere. It corrodes, then it frays, then individual strands break, and only after all of that does it part. If you look at the bottom corners of your door twice a year you will catch it every time, because a fraying cable looks obviously wrong: fuzzy, rust-stained, with wire whiskers standing out from the strand.
A door lifts on two cables, one each side, sharing the load evenly. When one parts, the whole weight shifts to the other. That side stays up, the failed side drops, and the door racks diagonally in the opening. The rollers on the low side usually come out of the track, and the remaining cable is now carrying double what it was designed for, so it is on a short clock.
If you catch it at the frayed stage it is a straightforward cable replacement. If you catch it after it parts, you are usually paying for cables plus an off-track repair, and sometimes a bent bottom bracket as well.
Both cables have run the same number of cycles in the same salty air, so we replace both. The drums get checked at the same time, because a cable that unwound and re-wrapped itself incorrectly will have scored the drum groove, and a scored drum shreds a new cable within months.
We also look at the bottom brackets. On a fifteen year old door in this climate they are often the most corroded part of the whole assembly, and they are the one component that is genuinely dangerous to work on, because the bottom bracket is under full spring tension.
Look at the bottom corners of the door, both sides. A healthy cable is clean and tightly wound. A failing one looks fuzzy, has rust staining, or has individual wire strands standing proud of the bundle. Any of those means replace it now rather than after it parts.
Usually, yes. A cable that has snapped or slipped off its drum lets that side drop. It can also be a broken spring on a two spring door. Either way, stop using the door, because cycling it in that state is what pulls it off the track.
We would advise against it. The bottom bracket the cable anchors to is under full spring tension, and releasing it without controlling that tension is one of the more common ways people get hurt on a garage door.
Road salt. The cable anchors at the lowest point of the door, which is exactly where salty meltwater off the car collects on the slab all winter. Dry-climate cables often last the life of the door. Here they are a wear item.
Related: Spring Repair · Off-Track Repair · Tune-Up
Catch it early and it stays a small job. Call now.
