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.
The lift cables transfer the springs' stored energy to the bottom of the door. They are steel wire rope wound onto a drum at each end of the torsion shaft, and they carry serious load on every cycle. When one parts, that corner drops immediately, the door racks in its track, and the surviving cable is suddenly doing a job it was not sized for.
This is where Tucson differs from wetter or colder markets. Elsewhere the main cable killer is corrosion at the bottom bracket from standing water and road salt. Here, the dominant cause is abrasion and drum wear driven by dust. Fine grit gets into the cable drum grooves and onto the rope itself, and every cycle the wire rope is drawn across an abrasive surface. The strands wear from the outside in, and the cable fails from mechanical wear rather than rot.
There is a corrosion exception worth knowing: monsoon season. A few weeks of genuine humidity, plus rain blowing under a perished bottom seal and pooling at the door line, will put surface rust on the last few inches of cable at the bottom bracket. So we check both ends — the drum for abrasive wear, the bottom fitting for monsoon corrosion.
Cables get replaced as a pair for the same reason springs do: equal age, equal mileage, and unequal cable stretch pulls a door crooked. Just as importantly, a snapped cable is almost never the whole story. Something caused it — a worn drum, a seized roller, a binding track, or a spring that lost tension and let the cable go slack enough to unwind and kink. Replacing the rope and ignoring the cause buys you a repeat visit, so we fix both and clean the drums while we are in there.
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.
Mostly abrasion. Desert dust gets into the cable drum grooves and wears the wire rope from the outside in with every cycle. Monsoon humidity adds surface corrosion at the bottom fitting, so we check both ends.
Typically $150 to $340 for a pair including labor. If the drums, bearings or bottom brackets are worn as well, 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 Tucson and Pima County.
