I replaced a cable on my garage door this evening to make the opener fully operational again. Shortly before the lockdown, one morning before work as I went to my car, I noticed a spring dangling from above on the one side of the door. Upon further inspection, I noticed a cable that had been connected to it had snapped. Presumably the spring went flying, but luckily didn’t hit anything of note, like my car. I looked at the other side to see how it was set up. I was largely unaware of the spring and cable setup on the sides of the door before that point.
Not wanting to run the opener with it like that, I manually opened the door. It wasn’t easy. It was really tough for the bottom quarter, and I ended up using my car jack to get it part way up. It took some pulling to get the jack underneath though, and it was easy to pull a muscle, especially with the car nearby. I ended up having to do this every time I wanted to put the car into or take it out of the garage for over a month. It wasn’t that often with the lockdown though.
I haven’t gone out too often during the lockdown. I looked online for the cables, but figured I should just get them locally so I could get it done faster. But, of course, if I don’t go out and get them, it actually takes longer. When I finally went to the stores locally, none of them had quite the ones I was looking for to match what was in there previously, which had a little plate on the one end. I found one that looked quite similar on Amazon, so I finally ordered that. It said it was going to take 1-2 weeks, but it actually only took 4 days, a nice surprise.
Putting on the cable wasn’t easy and took a while. The hardest part was putting the loop on a pin at the bottom of the door. It has a head that’s pretty wide for the loop, and that head is right close to the track. In fact, it seems to touch it at some points in the door’s movement. I had to position the door in a good spot and then really push and wiggle on it through the narrow access with a screw driver and some pliers to get it to go over. After that, I lifted the door back up, looked at the other side for how to run it over the two pulleys, and pulled the spring until I could get the plate on the s-hook expecting it. It took some pulling against the spring, but it fit. I had to adjust the bolt on the other end of the spring so it wasn’t looking twisted.
It then became hard to move the garage door down. I turned on the opener, and it just made noise, didn’t do anything, so I closed it as far as I could manually. It wouldn’t go all the way though. I turned on the opener again and it took it down the rest of the way. The movement seemed better than it had before all of this happened. It had been getting pretty rough and jolty.
It still doesn’t move that smoothly. The setup looked like it might’ve been partly home-made. I may want to just get a professional to “tune” it. Not sure how much that will run and if they’d just suggest replacing it or significant parts of the structure.