What It Costs
We don't post a flat number here because the job splits two ways depending on what's actually broken. A single frayed cable on one side of a double door, caught before it snaps, is a straightforward swap. A cable that's already let go usually means the door came down off-track or dropped onto the opener, and now you're also looking at a bent track, a cracked bottom panel, or a bottom bracket that needs replacing along with the cable. Houses from the 1970 era around here often still have the original galvanized aircraft cable and drums, and if the drum itself is pitted from corrosion, replacing just the cable doesn't fix the problem - the drum has to go too. We price it once we've seen which of those two situations you're in.
What the Repair Takes
Cable work means releasing tension safely first - on an extension-spring door that's different from a torsion door, and getting it wrong is how people get hurt. We wind down or clamp the springs, pull the old cable off the drum and bottom bracket, check the drum grooves and pulley for wear, then run new galvanized cable at the correct length for your door's track configuration. On a lot of the older Ojus doors we also check the bottom bracket itself, since that's the part the cable loops through and it takes the brunt of the pull every time the door opens. If the bracket is cracked or the hole is elongated from years of flex, we tell you - replacing a worn bracket now is a lot cheaper than another snapped cable later. We don't patch a corroded cable with a splice; it gets swapped, both sides, so you're not back to a mismatched pair in a year.
What Causes It Around Here
Three things line up on the 1970-era Ojus garage door to shorten cable life. First, the original extension-spring hardware from that build period puts the cable under a different load path than modern torsion setups, and it was never designed with 50 years of use in mind. Second, the climate here is mild year-round, so you don't get the freeze-thaw cracking that kills cable in colder states, but the humidity and salt air coming off the nearby coast corrode exposed steel steadily instead. Third, a lot of these doors are still on their original hardware because nothing's broken yet - until the cable finally gives, usually without warning. We don't push full hardware replacement on a door that's otherwise sound; if the rest of the system is in good shape, a cable and bracket swap is the honest fix, not a reason to sell you a new door.
