Cable, roller and track repair

What happens

What is actually going on

Lift cables run from the bottom bracket of the door up to drums on the torsion shaft. They are under tension whenever the door is closed. Cables fray from the inside out where they wind on the drum, so by the time fraying is visible from the ground the cable is already well through its life.

Rollers sit in the track and carry the door's guided path. Steel rollers with exposed bearings are what most builders fit and what most people still have; they dry out, seize, and start dragging along the track instead of rolling. Nylon rollers with sealed bearings run quieter and last considerably longer.

Track is thin formed steel and bends easily — a bumped car, a dropped ladder, or years of a seized roller grinding along it. A bent section makes the door bind at the same point in its travel every time, which loads the opener and the springs and shortens the life of both.

Signs

What you would notice

• The door hangs visibly lower on one side
• Grinding, scraping or squealing at the same point in every cycle
• Visible fraying, slack, or a snapped cable beside the track
• The door judders or sticks partway rather than moving smoothly
• The bottom of the door does not meet the floor evenly
• Rust or flat spots on the rollers

What we do

What the visit involves

1. Take the tension off before touching any cable. Cables under load are the second most dangerous part of a door after the springs.
2. Replace cables in pairs so the door stays even.
3. Replace seized rollers, normally with sealed-bearing nylon unless there is a reason not to.
4. Straighten or replace damaged track sections and re-align the vertical track.
5. Rebalance and re-test, including the opener's safety reverse.

What it costs

Priced before the work starts

You get the number before we begin, not after. What moves it is the size of the door, the parts it needs, and whether anything else came apart when the first thing failed.

Questions

What people ask

One cable snapped. Should both be replaced?

Yes. They have carried the same load for the same number of cycles, and an uneven pair pulls the door out of square, which is what puts a door off its track.

Are nylon rollers worth the difference?

In most cases yes, particularly with living space above the garage. Sealed bearings do not dry out the way exposed steel rollers do, and the noise difference is immediate and obvious.

My door will not seal at the bottom. Is that the seal?

Sometimes just the bottom seal, but often the door is sitting out of level because of a cable or roller problem, or the floor slab has heaved. We check the door is square before selling you a seal that will not fix it.

Where we work

Service area

Related

Other things that fail

• Off-track garage door recovery A door out of its track is under load and holding itself up by accident. Leave it where it is and call.
• Broken torsion spring replacement A snapped spring is the single most common reason a garage door stops working, and the one repair nobody should attempt themselves.
• Garage door repair, symptom by symptom Almost everything that stops a garage door is one of six parts. You do not need to know which one.