Garage Door Wire Replacement in Cleveland, OH

Why did the wire on one side of my garage door snap?

That "wire" is a lift cable. Galvanized aircraft cable, swaged loop at one end, wound on a drum at the torsion shaft. It carries the door's weight, not the opener. Cables almost always fail at the ends. The bottom loop sits inches off the slab, which is exactly where the trouble is.

Here that trouble is road salt. Slush drips off the car and pools at the bottom section all winter. Chloride wicks into the strand core and rusts it from inside. You see rust bubbling on the bottom panel first. Unheated detached garages off the alleys stay damp year-round, so the galvanizing goes chalky white, then orange.

The other failure is slack, not corrosion. A ridge of ice forms on a flat-slab driveway. The door lands on it, the opener keeps paying out cable, and the cable jumps the drum groove. The door hangs crooked. Stop there. Running it again bends the track and can pull the bottom bracket.

Cables get replaced in pairs, drums reset, door re-leveled. The bottom bracket stays under spring tension. That one is not a homeowner job. Worth checking the same visit: bearing plates, seized bottom rollers, and whether the bottom section is still solid enough to bolt to.