Garage Door Cables

The mechanism that allows you to open and close your garage door is surprisingly complicated. The cables are one of the key elements to this as they are what controls the tension on the door. As the door moves from the open to the closed position these cables have to extend or retract to make sure that the door does not become loose in its tracks. Therefore making sure that the garage door cables are in good shape is an important part of keeping the door working properly.

It is not all that common for garage door cables to need be replaced as the ones made by the top manufacturers like Garador and Hartmann will normally last for many years. However if you have an older garage you will find that they do eventually wear out and will need to be replaced. Fortunately this is pretty easy to do by yourself, although it will go a lot easier if you have somebody to help you. .

There are a few different malfunctions that you will need to watch for in order to determine if your garage door cables need to be replaced. The most likely is that the cables start to develop too much slack. This will happen eventually to all garage door cables as over time they will start to stretch out. When this happens the door will start to feel loose. Another malfunction that can happen is that the rollers that the cables run over can start to wear out and not work as effectively as they should, you will find the door starting to get harder to open and close when this happens. Far less common, although it can still happen, is that one of the cables will actually break. When this happens it needs to be replaced right away as the door will not work without it.

In order to repair your garage door cables you will need to get a kit that contains all of the necessary pieces. Companies like Marley and Wessex sell these and you can get them at any hardware store. The kits contain both the cables and the rollers so if you are going to go to the trouble of replacing a cable you might as well do both them and the rollers at the same time, particularly if you are replacing a cable because it has worn out. Otherwise you will likely find that you have to go back in a few months and replace the rollers anyway.

Actually replacing garage door cables is not all that hard to do and really anybody should be able to do it in a couple of hours. While you can do it yourself it is highly recommended that you get somebody to help you, a garage door is fairly heavy and having to hold it in place by yourself can be a challenge. In addition to a repair kit you will need a couple of sets of vice grips that can be used to hold the garage door in place while you are working. Other than that the only thing that you will need is a step ladder.

The process of replacing the garage door cables is fairly simple and mainly just involves removing the old one and feeding the new one into the correct holes. The repair kits offered by companies like Wickers and Garador will have all of the instructions that you need so just follow those and you should not run into any major problems. That being said there are a few common issues that do come up when people try to replace their garage cables. The biggest being that the door won’t open or close.

If after you have replaced the garage door rollers and the door doesn’t open or close the most likely reason is that the cable has come off of the roller, this is the first thing that you should check. If this does not solve the problem you likely have too much tension in the cable, this can be solved in most cases by moving the pulleys back. Other than those two issues there is not a lot else that can go wrong when you replace your garage door cables.