Hollywood, FL · Garage Door Service
Frayed or snapped lift cables on a Hollywood garage door. What it looks like, what drives the cost, why 1960s-70s hardware fails this way, and how fast we get you closed up again.
A lift cable failure shows up a few different ways. Sometimes the door slams down on one side because a cable snapped and the other side is still holding. Sometimes it looks fine at rest but the door won't move at all - the opener strains, the motor hums, and nothing lifts. You might see the cable itself, frayed strands sticking out near the bottom bracket or the drum at the top, or you might just find it hanging loose, unspooled off the drum entirely.
Cables don't usually fail out of nowhere. They stretch and fray over years of winding and unwinding under tension, and the failure point is almost always at one of two spots: where the cable wraps the bottom fixture, or where it wraps the drum near the torsion spring. If the drum end let go, you'll often see the cable still attached at the bottom, coiled up under the door instead of taut.
A door with one broken cable is not safe to run on the opener, even if the opener still tries. Running it that way twists the panel, bends the track, and turns a cable job into a panel-and-track job. If a cable has let go, leave the door where it sits and call before anyone tries the wall switch again.
We haven't listed a flat number here because cable jobs vary with what's actually damaged. A clean cable replacement on a door where the drums, bottom brackets, and springs are otherwise sound is a straightforward repair. It gets more involved - and costs more - when the snapped cable took a bottom bracket with it, chewed up a drum, or the door got run on a broken cable long enough to rack the track.
What we can tell you is what drives the number up or down on the call: whether it's one cable or two, whether the drums need replacing alongside the cable, and whether the spring system on that door is original to the house or already been swapped out once. Older torsion setups sometimes use drum sizes that aren't sold everywhere, which can mean an extra stop for parts on a job that would otherwise be same-visit.
We give the number on-site after we look at the drum, the bottom brackets, and the spring, not before. A phone quote on a cable job is a guess, and guessing on a broken-cable door isn't something we do.
Most of the housing across this service area was built between 1953 and 2005, with the bulk of it dating to the 1960s and 70s. That matters for cables specifically: a door installed on a house from that era, if it hasn't been upgraded, is running galvanized lift cable that's now decades into a wind-and-unwind cycle it was never rated to run forever. Cable doesn't have a fixed lifespan the way a spring does, but on a door that old, fraying at the drum or the bottom fixture is common, not rare.
The climate here is mild temperate - no hard freeze, no deep cold snaps that make steel brittle and snap cables the way they do in northern winters. That's actually a small mercy for cable life. What it doesn't protect against is age and cycle count. A door opened and closed daily for 50-plus years wears the cable the same way regardless of the thermometer.
Across the 40-plus named areas in this service territory, the pattern repeats: older one-piece and sectional doors on original or first-generation torsion hardware, cables that have never been swapped, and owners who don't know a cable is due until it lets go.
A single snapped cable, caught before it drags the track or bracket out of shape, is usually a same-day fix once we're on site - the drum comes off, the new cable gets wound and tensioned, the door gets tested through a full cycle. If both cables are original and one just went, we'll usually recommend doing both while the drums are already off, since the second one is close behind on age and it's not worth a second trip.
What stretches the timeline is damage beyond the cable itself: a bent track from the door running lopsided, a bottom bracket that tore loose, or a drum size that isn't something we carry on the truck for that particular door. In that case we're back for a second visit once the part's in.
Until it's fixed, don't force the door by hand and don't let the opener run it. A door hanging on one cable can drop without warning. If you need the garage secured in the meantime, tell us on the call - we can talk through what's safe to do until we get there.
No. If one lift cable has snapped, the door is unbalanced and can fall without warning even if the opener seems to move it. Leave the car in the driveway, don't run the opener, and don't try to lift the door by hand until it's been fixed.
Not always, but if the door's original hardware is decades old, we'll usually recommend replacing both while the drums are already off. The second cable is typically the same age and close behind on wear, and it saves a second service call.
Cables fray gradually at the drum or bottom bracket from years of winding under tension, and the fraying isn't always visible from the ground. On a door built during Hollywood's main construction era, that wear has often had 40 to 60 years to add up before it finally lets go.
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We also handle cable repair in these Hollywood-area suburbs.
Call now or request a free quote - same-day service on most repairs, upfront written pricing.
