Broken Garage Door Spring or Cable?
A bang like a gunshot from the garage, then a door too heavy to lift. Springs and cables are the one part of a garage door that genuinely should never be touched by anyone but a technician.
Quick Answer
A broken garage door spring announces itself with a loud bang and leaves the door far too heavy to lift, because the spring — not the motor — carries almost the entire weight. A broken cable instead leaves the door hanging crooked, with one side lifting and the other dragging. Both are under extreme tension and both are genuinely dangerous to work on without winding bars and training. A single spring, a matched pair and cables are each quoted supplied and fitted, with the price confirmed before any work starts. Springs are rated in cycles rather than years, typically 10,000, which is seven to ten years of normal use — less where the air is damp or salty, which pits the steel and shortens their life.
Common Causes
Metal fatigue at end of life
Every cycle flexes the steel a little. Springs are rated around 10,000 cycles, so a family opening the door four to six times a day reaches that in under a decade.
Salt and damp
Genuinely worse near the water. Salt pits spring steel and cable strands, and a pitted spring fails years early — which is why an exposed door gets corrosion-protected parts as standard.
Wrong spring specification
A spring sized for a lighter door — or a pair mismatched after a single replacement — works outside its design range and fails prematurely.
Cable fraying at the drum or bracket
Cables wear where they wrap the drum and at the bottom bracket. Rust and fraying at that lowest half-metre is the classic failure.
Poor balance stressing one side
A door running crooked for months loads one spring and one cable far harder than the other, so that side goes first — and often takes its twin soon after.
Sudden shock loading
A door dropped onto an obstruction, or forced while jammed, shock-loads the whole lifting system and can part a cable outright.
What You Can Check Safely
Safe to check yourself
- Look for a visible gap in the spring coil above the door — a broken spring separates cleanly
- Check whether the door hangs level or one side is higher, which points to a cable
- Look for slack, frayed or rust-pitted cable near the bottom brackets
- With the motor disengaged and the door DOWN, test whether it lifts easily — very heavy means the spring
- Note whether you heard a single loud bang, which is the signature of a spring letting go
Do not attempt
- Do not attempt to replace, wind or adjust a spring — the stored energy is enough to cause serious injury
- Do not use the opener; it is not built to lift an unassisted door and will burn out or bend panels
- Do not pull the manual release while the door is raised, because it can drop under its own weight
- Do not prop a raised door with timber or a jack and work underneath it
When to Call a Technician
Call a technician straight away if any of the following apply:
- A loud bang came from the garage and the door will not lift
- There is a visible gap in the spring coil
- A cable is hanging loose, frayed or off its drum
- The door lifts crooked, slams down, or feels enormously heavy
- The opener strains, trips or reverses immediately on every attempt
What Perth Customers Say
“Brilliant! Mended, new springs and wires. All working again within 4 hours of my phone call on a Saturday! Thanks Al.”
Donald Veal · Spring Repair
“My garage door cable snap and we were trapped as we could not open the car door. ABC Garage came within an hour and replaced the cable and fixed it. Great service.”
Joyce Boey · Cable Repair
Get Help With This Problem
Prefer to call? 0422 828 800Heard the bang and the car is stuck inside?
Do not try to force it — a door with a failed spring is unsupported weight. We are open 24 hours across Perth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stop using the door entirely, including the opener, and keep everyone out from underneath it. The spring carried nearly all the door's weight, so what is left is unsupported and the motor is not built to lift it. Do not pull the manual release if the door is part-way open. Then call — a single spring or a matched pair is quoted supplied and fitted.
It is driven by how many springs your door runs and what size they are. A single spring supplied and fitted is the smallest version of the job; a matched pair costs more and is always replaced together; and heavier doors running three or four springs cost more again. If the springs themselves are sound and the door has simply lost tension, a re-tension needs no new parts at all. Door type and size, access, and whether you need us in standard hours or after hours all move the figure. Every price is confirmed before work starts and there is no call-out fee to quote.
It can be done, but rarely safely by one person. A double door with a failed spring can weigh well over 100kg dead, and even if it is heaved up there is nothing holding it there — it can slam down without warning. If you need a car out before we arrive, call us first and we will tell you whether your particular door can be safely propped. Never leave a spring-less door raised and never work beneath one.
It should not be used. Some openers will drag a door up on a broken spring, and every time that happens the motor, gears, cables and panels take loads they were never designed for — which is how a single spring becomes a bent door and a burnt-out opener. If one spring of a pair has gone, the door may seem to limp along; it is still working every remaining component past its limit.
On a two-spring door, almost always. Both springs have flexed the same number of cycles, so the survivor is usually weeks or months from the same end, and replacing the pair together costs meaningfully less than two separate replacements with two call-outs. The exceptions are single-spring doors and pairs where one was recently replaced — we will tell you honestly which case yours is once we have seen it.
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