• FREE SPEECH SOCIAL MEDIA

    If you're looking for a Free Speech Social Media site, check out Blabbook.com

    - NO FACT CHECKING - NO SHADOW BANNING - NO POINT OF VIEW CENSORSHIP

My garage door is about to die, i'm trying to save it

toyotafan

Toyota Truck Club Founder
Staff member
1000 Posts
This door is now 18 years old and has been up and down maybe 30,000 times in it's life. We live across from a 30+ acre greenbelt park and we use the garage door as the main entry and exit to the house like 90% of the time. Plus with the weather changes between 20-30 on average for the coldest days of winter to maybe 115 inside the garage on the hottest days of the year ... it's a lot of stress on this thin metal garage door. On top of that, a bicycle or a box or anything under one side of the door has caused it to come off the cable more than once. I'll give the door another 24 months at the most, and that includes me doing so much to try to fix it. I think I already need to get new garage door tracks as these have been bent out of conformity.

Nevertheless, the door comes off the cable semi-frequently, here's a quick way to get it back on track and ready to go up and door again.


QUICK WAY TO GET YOUR CROOKED GARAGE DOOR & CABLE BACK ON THE PULLEY

Did your garage door cable jump off the pulley wheel? Is it crooked? Most of the time this is something you can fix yourself if you have a ladder, vice grips, and some basic knowledge of how the door operates. This happens more often on 16-foot doors than on 8-foot doors. Usually, something gets stuck under one side of the door so the other side keeps going down. This causes the springs to still turn and the cable might jump off the pulley and will make the door look broken and crooked.

If you have these basic tools and are comfortable on a ladder (or like me can just reach them because you have freakishly long monkey arms) then try this ...
  1. Disengage your door opener from the door itself (pull down on the emergency handle release rope).
  2. Then take care to push the door back up all the way open, leave enough room to access the cable (as you can see in the video).
  3. Lock the garage door in place with the vice grips.
  4. Then spool the cable back onto the pulley, make certain to not cross the cable back over itself.
  5. When you get it almost fully back on the pulley, you will need to rotate the pulley back far enough to get the cable all of the way on.
  6. Once this is done, remove the vice grips and slowly let the garage door come down. You will have to watch the cable to make certain that it doesn't come off again.
  7. Test the door up and down manually all the way. Then re-hook the automatic garage door opener. You're done!
 

Related Content You Might Like:

Top