Garage door cable snapped and the door is stuck?

The lifting cable runs from the bottom corner of the door, up past the side, to a drum on the end of the torsion shaft. The spring turns the shaft and the cable winds on the drum to lift the door. Each cable carries about half the door weight and the spring does the lifting. When one cable breaks, the other side has to carry the load alone.

Cables usually break where they have been wearing for years, either at the bottom end by the bracket, where moisture and road salt sit, or over the drum where the strands fatigue. Rust is part of that, and so are dry spots where the cable rubs a track. A cable can also snap suddenly if the door was caught on something, or if the opener kept pushing on a binding door.

What you may notice is odd. Sometimes the door stays shut and simply will not move. Sometimes it came down crooked and stayed there. Sometimes it opened one time on only one cable and the other cable is now stretched. The cable drum may also be damaged or the shaft shifted, so the fix is not just threading a new cable.

A single snapped cable is almost always a repair. Most cables are replaced as a pair, because the surviving cable is the same age and has done the same work.

If the door bent or buckled when it dropped, or the section tore at the bottom bracket, part of the answer may be panel replacement. We will tell you what we find before we work.