Richfield, Edina
Snapped or frayed garage door cables on a Richfield home built around 1959. We travel 4 miles from Edina to replace cables, drums, and worn hardware correctly.
Watch-outs
Most of the cable calls we get from Richfield trace back to the same thing: the house was built around 1959, and whatever garage door hardware is on it now has likely been replaced once already, sometimes with parts that don't quite match the original drum size or spring weight.
When a cable is even slightly the wrong length or the wrong gauge, it rides unevenly on the drum and starts to fray at one spot instead of wearing evenly. That frayed spot is where it lets go, usually when the door is partway up or down, and usually with the opener still trying to pull against it.
A fair number of these doors never had the torsion hardware upgraded at all. The original stamped-steel drums from that era groove over time, and a grooved drum chews through a cable from the inside, which is not something you can see by looking at the door from the garage floor.
We also see cables that have simply rusted through at the bottom roller bracket, where road salt and melting snow sit against galvanized wire all winter. One broken cable on a two-car door usually means the other one is close behind, since they've carried the same load for the same number of years.
Booking
We run this call out of Edina, about 4 miles from most Richfield addresses, so there's no separate branch or crew based in town. When you call, tell us whether the door is stuck shut, stuck open, or hanging crooked on one side, because that changes what we load on the truck before we leave. A door that's crooked with a cable off the drum is not safe to force up or down by hand, and running the opener on it can bend the track or tear the bottom bracket loose, which turns a cable job into a bigger one. Leave it alone until we get there.
We'll ask for the rough age of the door and opener if you know it, since Richfield's housing stock runs mostly from the late 1950s through the 70s, and the hardware on an original door is different from a replacement installed ten years ago. That one detail saves time on-site because we bring the right drum and cable stock instead of guessing.
On the truck
For the torsion setups common on Richfield's older doors, we carry galvanized aircraft cable in the standard gauges used on residential torsion systems, along with replacement drums sized for both older stamped hardware and newer extruded aluminum drums.
We also stock extension-spring cable kits with safety cables, since some of these homes still run extension springs along the horizontal track instead of a torsion bar overhead, which was common before torsion conversions became standard.
One limitation worth saying plainly: if the drum itself is a discontinued size from an original 1960s-era track system, we may not have an exact match on the truck.
In that case we'll either source it or recommend converting that side to current hardware so both drums match going forward, rather than forcing a near-fit part that will groove again in a season or two.
Our process
We start by releasing tension safely with winding bars, never by cutting a wound spring loose, and we pull both cables even if only one has broken, because the other one has done the same years of work. We check the drums for grooving and the bottom brackets for rust before putting new cable on, since putting fresh cable on a damaged drum just buys you another few months.
Given the cold winters this area gets, we also check that the new cable sits correctly in a drum groove that hasn't frozen or corroded unevenly, which matters more here than it would in a milder climate. Once the cables are set, we re-tension the springs, balance the door by hand, and run it through a full cycle on the opener before we call it done.
Questions
Cable fraying happens gradually, usually from a grooved drum or an uneven wind, and it can hold for months before the last strand gives. On a lot of Richfield's older doors that groove has been building for years without anyone noticing, since the damage sits inside the drum, not on the visible part of the cable.
We stock galvanized cable and common drum sizes used on both original and replacement torsion hardware. If your door has a discontinued drum from its original 1960s-era install, we may need to order it or recommend converting that side to current hardware so both match.
We run this call out of Edina, about 4 miles away, so there's no separate branch in Richfield. We bring stock based on what you tell us about the door's age and symptoms before we head out.
No. A door with a broken cable can hang crooked and drop without warning, and running the opener against it can bend the track or tear the bottom bracket. Leave the door where it is until the tension is released properly.
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Edina Garage Door Pros repairs and installs garage doors, springs and openers in Edina, MN and the surrounding area.
