The cables on any overhead door are a highly necessary opening system component.
Garage door cables make for the much smoother and less noisy operation of your garage door overall and even act as a safety measure in the sudden case that a spring breaks.
Cables are so important that the snap of a single one might have you and your vehicle stuck either inside or outside of your garage.
Besides simply being plain irritating, malfunctioning overhead door cables can quickly turn the area of your garage door into a danger zone for major injuries.
To deal with faulty garage door rollers, replacing them can make all the difference!
If your garage door’s rolling performance has been rather noisy or rough, these are signs that it’s due for new rollers.
Nylon sealed rollers are built to last around 25,000 cycles, making them more recommendable as opposed to factory rollers which age faster at 10,000 cycles.
On the bright side, as for how to install garage door cables, these critical parts to your opening system do not require too intense of a process to install or replace by oneself.
Identify what sort of cables your garage door needs.
Before you look into how to install garage door cables, you’ll first need to familiarize yourself with the different types available.
There are safety cables, extension spring cables, and torsion spring cables. Each of these variations have their own lengths, strand counts, and thicknesses,
Safety cables
This cable type comes in diameters of ⅛-inch and 3/32 inches.
For an eight foot door, a safety cable must be 120 inches, and for a seven foot door, 108 inches.
Safety cables are tied off on both ends and run through the extension spring’s middle.
Serving as a helpful safety measure, they are meant for restraining the extension spring upon its, or the cables’ breakage.
Extension spring cables
Most standard extension spring garage doors require 3/32 inches worth of cable in order to provide a hefty 950 pound weight capacity.
Unfortunately, the likeliness of frayed cables is higher with this sort as the setup for extension springs needs more moving parts than those of torsion springs.
To more effectively avoid undesired fraying, you’re better off doing away with the 3/32-inch standard and switching over to a ⅛-inch, 7×19 strand spring cable.
The greater number of thin cable strands on this option allows for improved flexibility that is capable of carrying 1,950 pounds–twice the weight you get with the standard!
Torsion spring cables
Generally, garage door cable torsion springs sport a thickness of ⅛-inch and 7×7 strand (meaning it’s composed of seven bundled strands).
Together, these seven bundled strands create a single ⅛-inch diameter cable with an impressive 1,650 pound weight capacity.
A downside of this spring cable type is that it is less flexible and slightly more noisy due to the way they rub around the cable drum’s wind as the garage door moves closer towards being completely open.
To upgrade this rather problematic standard, you may instead go with a ⅛-inch thick, 7×19 strand cable which offers a higher number of thinner cable strands.
This alternative will grant your garage door cables an upgraded 1,950 pound weight capacity that is far more flexible than the first option.
If you’re looking for more flexibility, you can also choose 3/32-inch torsion spring cables, but they offer a lower weight capacity at 950 pounds, which is still perfect for any regular garage door.
Now that you’re aware of what kind of garage door cables are out there, you can go ahead and look up how to install garage door cables.
A simple and informative video such as this: can be a great help!
There are plenty more instructional videos on YouTube that can teach you how to replace your garage door cables, no matter what type they are.
If you have any further questions or concerns regarding your overhead door, remember that it is always best to get in touch with an experienced company such as ours to get help for your garage door needs.
