Highland Park, IL · Same-day service
Lift Cables Replaced and Drums Reset in Highland Park
Cables fail two ways and the two do not look alike. One is slow corrosion at the bottom of the run that nobody spots until a strand gives. The other takes a second, when a door lands on something and the slack cable jumps off its drum.
Serving Highland Park
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Either way the door ends up out of square, one side dropping ahead of the other and the whole thing wedging in the track. BH Garage Door replaces lift cables across Highland Park with same-day appointments and resets both drums as part of the job.
The cable that jumps its drum
It happens when a door closes onto something and the opener keeps running for another half second. The load comes off that cable, it goes slack, and instead of sitting in its groove it rides over the flange of the drum. A bottom seal frozen to the slab does this every winter, and so does a bin left standing in the opening.
The door will often run once more. On the next cycle the loose cable binds, the good side keeps pulling, and the whole door comes up twisted. If you can see a loop of cable hanging near the shaft, that is what has happened. Stop there, because every further cycle drives the door harder into the track.
Driveways that fall toward the garage
Ravine ground puts a lot of Highland Park drives on a slope, and not every one of them slopes away from the door. Where the run falls toward the opening, meltwater carrying road salt stands against the bottom brackets for weeks at a time, and it works on the lowest few inches of cable, which is the part under the most load.
Corrosion of that kind moves from inside the strand outward, so a cable can be well past safe while the outer wrap still looks respectable. Broken wires standing proud, a rust bloom around the bottom fixing, or a rough drag when you run a rag along the cable all mean the same thing.
New cable is half the job, the drums are the rest
Both cables come off and both go back. Fitting one new cable next to one that has seen the same winters is a return visit with the date already set, so they get replaced as the pair they were installed as.
Then the drums are set. Each cable has to seat in its groove with the same number of wraps under the same tension, or the door hangs low on one side however new the cable is. Taller doors on the newer builds carry more cable and more wrap to get right, and the drum has to suit the lift the track was built for.
Other work we do in Highland Park
- Torsion Springs
- Extension Springs
- Roller Repair
- Panel Replacement
- Smart Openers
- Commercial
- Custom Doors
- Maintenance
- Safety Inspection
- Lubrication
- Spring Replacement
- Opener Repair
- Installation
- Emergency Service
- Track Repair
Cable Repair in nearby towns
More on garage door cable repair, or everything we cover in Highland Park.
Questions
Highland Park questions about this job
One cable looks rusty but the door still works. Can it wait until spring?
Not comfortably. Rust that is visible at the bottom fixing normally means the strand underneath has lost more than it shows, and cables fail under load, which is when the door is moving with somebody near it. It is a short job now and a much bigger one after the door has come down crooked.
The door landed hard and there is a loose loop of cable near the drum.
The cable has come out of its groove. Leave the opener switched off and do not try to pull the loop back by hand, because the spring on that shaft is still fully wound and holding the weight of the door. Re-seating it means unwinding tension properly with winding bars.
Can the old cable be refitted rather than replaced?
Sometimes, if it jumped clean and shows no damage. Any kink, flattening or broken wire and it is finished, because those spots are where it will part. The tension has to come off the spring either way, so the extra work in fitting fresh cable while we are in there is small.
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