Since it's finally getting warmer here in Toronto, which is a good thing, and a lot of stuff is broken around the house, which is not a good thing, I decided to try to fix my busted garage door. The door broke a month after we bought our first home. Yay! Along with the dryer, washer, and just about everything else around the home. It's a good thing I had a house inspector check things out before we signed (Sarcasm) :-/
So anyway, the steel cable snapped, badly rusted, on the right side and as the door came sliding down, all the weight shifted to the left side which was still supported by a steel cable on that side. Problem was, as all the weight shifted, the heavy wooden door bent the mounting brackets on the side walls, including the left rail on the left side.
I tried sliding the door up and down a few times, with some difficulty, due to the bent rails and tilting. Moving the door up and down allowed me to figure out the spring winding mechanism above the door, driven by the steel cable wheels on each side.
I also had to disengage the door from the motor chain so that I can move it up all the way as it initially got stuck half way up. Once I realized the steel cable on the right side snapped I took a trip with my dad to the nearest Home Depot to get some new cables (1/8 thick) with few other parts.
The next challenge came from fixing the brackets and the bent steel rail. We unscrewed it from the wall and used a hammer to flatten the brackets into the right angle again, and used my dad (6' and 200 pounds of muscle) to bent the rail the other way back to make it straight again.
We put everything back into its initial assembly and that's when we really started to scratch our heads to figure out how to fix the busted steel cable on the right side.
We knew we had to make a loop at one end, that attached to the bottom of the door, and the other end to the wheel at the top. The hardest thing was figuring out how to get access to the wheel as it is hidden behind the top of the door. Next, we pushed back the door all the way and had to used some 6 inch long wood to hold it back so we get some room to work with. Remember the door was still attached to the steel cable on the left site pulling the door back a bit.
I know this was a hack, but I really didn't feel like taking the door apart any more than I had to. The sun was setting and it the temperature dropped below zero again. We finally managed to wind the steel cable on the wheel, which I was able to get lose from its axle, then turn the axle over few time to wind up the spring, so that when match up the tension on the new steel cable with that on the other side -- hopefully. Remember, this is not an exact science. We tightened up the screws on the side of the wheel and left go of the axle. Vioala!
That worked great, but the final test came after attaching the door to the pulling chain and letting it snap into the pulley properly. I expected something funky to happen at our first test, but what do you know, everything worked just like new. Oh ya, and remember, to put a lot of machine grease on the rails and the sliding wheels.
Great, now onto fixing the furness, humidifier, dryer, washer, windows, tiles, and just about everything else busted 'round the house.