Auroras ASAP Garage Door Service replaces garage door lift cables throughout Aurora, Denver and the south metro, seven days a week, on (303) 985-7942. A lift cable runs from the drum at the top corner down to the bottom bracket on each side, and it transfers the spring's pull into lifting the door. When one frays or snaps, that side drops, the door jams in the opening at an angle, and the load dumps onto the remaining cable.
This is a repair to make quickly. A door hanging on one cable is unbalanced, the opener is fighting it, and a second cable failure drops the door.
How a cable tells you it is failing
- The door hangs crooked, one corner lower than the other
- A cable visibly loose, slack, or hanging off its drum
- Broken strands sticking out of the cable like a wire brush
- The door jams at an angle in the opening and will not travel
- A rust line along the cable near the bottom bracket
- Rubbing or scraping where a cable has slipped off the drum groove
Why cables fail on Denver metro doors
Rust is the leading cause, and it almost always starts at the bottom. The cable ends and the bottom brackets sit at floor level just inside the door, which is where salty slush drips off the car and where snow blows in under the seal, so that corner of the garage stays wet and salted all winter and the strands give there first. The second cause is wear at the drum: if the door has ever been out of balance, the cable wraps unevenly and the strands grind against each other.
The third is a door that has been hit or has come off its track, which stretches the cable on the side that dropped even when nothing looks broken. That is why we inspect cables on every off-track and collision repair, not only on cable calls.
What a correct cable replacement includes
Both cables get replaced, not just the broken one, for the same reason springs go in pairs: they have the same history and the same wear. We release the spring tension safely, replace both cables, seat them in the drum grooves, reset the drums on the shaft so both sides wind evenly, and re-level the door in the opening.
Then the door is balance tested by hand before the opener goes back on. A cable job that ends without a balance test leaves the opener to discover the problem for you.
Preventing the next one
Cables are a two-minute check inside a yearly tune-up, and catching a frayed strand before it parts is the difference between a scheduled visit and a door stuck crooked on a Tuesday morning. Wiping the slab inside the door and the bottom brackets dry after a snowy week extends cable life measurably, because that corner is where salted meltwater sits.
One safety note that matters on older metro doors: never loosen a bottom bracket yourself. The bottom bracket is under full cable tension even when the door is down, which is why it is usually the red-painted part on the door.
Related garage door work
- Garage Door Spring Repair and Replacement
- Garage Door Track Alignment and Roller Replacement
- Garage Door Repair
- Garage Door Maintenance and Tune-Ups
Not sure which one you need? That is what the call is for. See every service we run or the areas we cover.