One side of the door dropped, the door sits crooked, and there is loose wire rope by the track. A snapped lift cable is a fast fix, but only after we find what cut it.
Springs store the energy; cables deliver it. Each one is a length of steel wire rope running from a bracket at the bottom corner of the door up to a grooved drum on the torsion shaft, and it is under substantial tension every second the door is closed. Lose one and that corner has nothing holding it. It drops, the door goes out of square in the track, and the remaining cable inherits a load meant for two.
Cable failures here concentrate at the bottom fitting, and the reason is what goes on the roads. Colorado Springs and CDOT use magnesium chloride and other liquid de-icers heavily, and that material is significantly more corrosive to steel than rock salt. It comes home on your tires, melts off in the garage, and pools along the bottom of the door. Exactly where the lift cable anchors to its bracket.
The result is a cable whose top three feet look perfect while the last six inches quietly corrode 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, replace it before it strands you with the car inside. Rinsing the slab in spring, and keeping the bottom seal intact so meltwater does not sit at the door line, both help.
Both sides get done together, partly because the survivor has the same service history and partly for a mechanical reason: two cables of different age have stretched by different amounts, and a door hung on mismatched lengths will never travel square.
The more important point is that a cable does not simply expire. Something abraded it, kinked it, or let it go slack. A worn drum groove, a roller that stopped turning, a track pinching the door, or a spring quietly losing tension until the rope unwound off its drum. Fitting new rope over an unfixed cause is how you end up paying twice, so we chase the cause down as part of the job.
No. The door is unbalanced and the surviving cable is overloaded. Running it risks the second letting go with the door in motion.
Equal age and equal cycles mean the second is close behind, and mismatched stretch makes a door lift crooked. Doing the pair on one visit is cheap insurance.
Corrosion at the bottom bracket, driven by magnesium chloride road de-icer melting off tires and pooling at the door line. It is more aggressive to steel than rock salt. 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 drums, bearings or bottom brackets are corroded too, 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 Colorado Springs.
