One side of the door dropped, the door sits crooked, and there is loose wire rope coiled by the track. A snapped lift cable is a fast fix — but only after we find what cut it.
The lift cables transfer the springs' stored energy to the bottom of the door. They are steel wire rope wound onto a drum at each end of the torsion shaft, and they carry serious load every cycle. When one parts, that corner of the door drops immediately, the door racks in its track, and the remaining cable is suddenly doing a job it was not sized for.
Cable failures here concentrate at the bottom fitting, and the reason is winter. Snow gets tracked into the garage on tires, melts, and pools along the bottom of the door where the cable anchors to its bracket. Add the de-icing salt and magnesium chloride that comes off valley roads and you have a corrosive puddle sitting against bare steel for months. The top three feet of the cable looks perfect while the last six inches quietly rusts through.
It is worth glancing at that bracket each spring. If the wire rope looks dark, scaly or thinner than the rest of the run, get it replaced before it strands you with the car inside.
Cables get replaced as a pair for the same reason springs do: equal age, equal mileage, and unequal cable length pulls a door crooked. Just as important, a snapped cable is almost never the whole story. Something caused it — a seized roller, a bent track forcing the door to bind, a cable jumping a worn drum, or a spring that lost tension and let the cable go slack enough to unwind. Replacing the rope and ignoring the cause buys you a repeat visit. We fix both.
No. The door is unbalanced and the surviving cable is overloaded. Running it risks the second cable letting go with the door in motion. Leave it down and call.
Equal age and equal cycles mean the second is close behind, and mismatched cable stretch makes a door lift crooked. Doing the pair on one visit is cheap insurance.
Corrosion at the bottom bracket is the leading cause here — melted snow and road salt sitting against the anchor point all winter. Beyond that: worn drums, binding tracks, seized rollers, or slack from a failing spring.
Typically $150 to $350 for a pair including labor. If the drum, bearings or bottom brackets are also damaged, or the springs need attention at the same time, the number moves — and we quote it all before starting.
Related: Spring Repair · Off-Track Repair · Tune-Up
Same-day cable replacement across Boise and the Treasure Valley.
