Episode: 2342
Title: HPR2342: Wherein our hero fails to repair a garage door.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2342/hpr2342.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:30:28

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This is HPR Episode 2,342 entitled, where in our hero fails to repair a garage door.
It is hosted by Christopher M. Hobb and is about 25 minutes long, and Karim and Ecclisit
flag.
The summary is, I try and fail to fix my garage door.
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Alright, HPR. Hopefully this is recording and hopefully I'm talking loud enough.
The screen looks like it is.
It's been a while since I've recorded on my rock box.
I've always enjoyed the episodes that John Colp does about repairing things, and I have
a fine opportunity here to do my own episode about repairing things.
I have a garage door extension cable that broke, and it made quite a mess.
I'll see if I can include a picture of this, but it's snapped right at the base.
It happened to bend the track, which is a little frustrating.
The store is 140 pound wooden garage door, and I put in cables a few years back that were
rated for 180 pounds, and it just snapped.
So I got a beefier cable, and I hope to put this all together.
The last thing that happened was one of the extension springs broke, and I was in the
garage when it broke, and that was terrifying.
It sounded like a shotgun went off, and I ducked behind the car, and luckily nothing got
damaged too bad.
I put a hole in the wall, otherwise everything's okay.
So just to be safe, I'm going to replace both of these cables.
I've left the other cable in place, so I can eyeball it and put in the best link I can
do.
I've got the door up right now, and I hope it stays up.
This is a really pretty simple fix.
You have never seen a garage door opener on a wooden door, and I'm sure it's the same
on aluminum door.
You have a track in the middle of the garage, which has a little bicycle chain going to
a motor, and below the track there's a fitting of sorts that connects to an arm that is
bolted to the top of the garage door, and then on either side of the garage door you
have springs mounted to the ceiling, which goes through to pulleys that have a cable going
through them, and are ultimately mounted at the bottom of the garage door.
These springs are fully extended when the garage door is down, creating tension so that
when you open the door, when the motor is pulling back on the door, arguably the hardest
work that it will have to do, the springs help bring it back.
They also just sort of smooth out the action on the door.
That's about it, and so the extension cables for the spring, and yes, I will note that
I do not have safety cables for the springs, which is a terrible idea, but I didn't pick
them up at the store.
I'll go get them after this, but the extension cables themselves are what connect the springs
to the pulleys and then the pulleys to the door, and they are about, and I bought this
box, and it was pre-opened when I bought it, so that's probably a bad sign.
But the cable looks to be a good integrity, so I think it will be fine.
At any rate, they are about, in my case, maybe 10 feet long, if I had to guess, not sure
how many meters that is, not very good at conversion, so I'm going to cut these zip ties
off that are holding the cable together, and I'll get started.
So as I mentioned before, I've got the garage door locked into the track in the open position.
I have disconnected the other spring, so if this thing comes loose, it's coming down fast,
so I'm going to try and work relatively quickly.
But it's pretty secure at the moment on the track.
So the plan here is to install this first cable on the, from my direction, the right
hand side of the door, and then replace the cable on the left hand side of the door,
and if that works, well, I suppose my garage door will function again, and then I have
to go get safety cables.
So on the base of the door, on this terrifying standing underneath the door that's held
up by that one clip, there is a loop that I need to run this cable through.
I just don't remember which direction it goes, so I'm going to get my ladder here, come
over to the other side.
One thing I have just realized is I'm not taking pictures here, like John does, so maybe
this won't be as exciting, you just get to hear me, probably swear a lot.
All right, so it loops through backwards, without any visual aid, of course, so.
All right, I've replaced these once before, and it wasn't that big of a chore, but I do
it so rarely, and I can't ever remember the appropriate means of pulling it off.
So it's really quite simple to push our cable through the bottom and pull it out the
top, but I need pliers to do that, I can't use my hands, I guess.
My scripts have probably worked too, making a bunch of noise, so I got my pliers out,
sliding them across the loop of the safety cable and compressing it to the best I can,
so I can squeeze it through the loop in the door.
It's not a loop release, so much as a bracket, and I'm on the wrong side of the door, details,
minor details, and it fits in, it has to be looped back, maybe we can feed it through
and loop it as we go, that would be fantastic, all the while terrified of the door swinging
down on me.
The exciting life of home ownership, because in Capitalist America, home owns you.
All right, looping it under, little elbow grease here.
And then there's a piece holding the cable together that's going to need to be hit down
inside the bracket, so, but now, once I just looped over there, okay, got it looped over,
now I need to pull the cable back through itself before feeding it through the pulley that
is above it.
So if you can envision this, you have, ultimately at the top of the track, a pulley, directly
below that pulley, is a bracket on the open door, the bottom of the open door, and I have
fed the cable through that bracket, and I am now doubling it back on itself, effectively
making it not.
One would hope, and then, once I pull it through it, so, like that, sure that sounds nice.
Back and then, force the portion that holds the cable in place back into itself so it
doesn't cut a hole in my door frame.
Okay, now we're covered in grease, and I'm sure that sounded nice on the door, let me
shut the back door so the door doesn't flee.
Okay, and I probably shouldn't be doing this, we're in flip-flops either.
So many OSHA violations here, we need pictures so that everybody can laugh at my safety measures,
but this is Arkansas after all.
We make do with what we've got.
Alright, so what I'm doing is I'm pushing that bracket way down into the bottom of the
cable, I'm sorry, way down into the bottom of the door, now I'm going to loop it back
over the pulley, so I can get a hold of it.
Okay, once we're attached to the pulley, we need to hook it up to another pulley, which
is currently just free dangling, and tie this off and make sure I know which way I'm
going here.
This other pulley will be attached to the load spring, which will make this whole mess
work, so I'm now examining the other pulley to remember how my work went, pull it over
the top, alright, so we're going to feed, we're going to backfeed this line, and we're
going to do my temporary knot here, over the top, alright, here, we're going to take
the other pulley, and we're going to pull that dude through, which is now covered in
insulation from my attic because I did not clean this ladder.
Okay, now there's a series of three holes in the, in the, what do you call it, the track,
whereby one loosely ties one cable to secure it.
Now, I don't feel like this is a very safe method, but you've heard our current safety situation,
and it appears as if this particular cable may be a hair short, but we're about to find out.
And how this works is you go over the top, so there's three holes, go over the top,
back up to the bottom, back over the top, and then you tie yourself a nice loose little
knot, and hope that there's enough friction to keep everything in place.
Which they generally is, that is, I think it probably speaks for the knot, that the point
of failure on this was the lower crimp on the actual cabling as opposed to the knot
coming loose, which would be our horse nightmare, so we're going to pull this down through
the hole, back up through it, so, oh come on, get in there, back down one more time,
and feed it through it, so pulling it tight, and we're golden, I think, let me loop it back
through this once more for measure, if I can, maybe I can't, there it goes, alright,
some plodder, wow, got my beard stuck in the cable, that's fun, all sorts of safety violations
here, whoo, that hurt, first injury of the day folks, that's the worst injury we get
out of this, we're doing alright, alright, that is a tight knot ready to go, okay, I know,
I can install the other side, I'm just going to involve removing the old cable, which is
not too busy of a chore, I don't think, but we'll see, and I've also blown out one of
my flip-flops in the process, so now my work shoes are gone and I'm barefoot, okay, so
we will need to work to remove this other pulley, this pulley is going to be exciting to
attach to this pulley, that's for sure, sorry I was just pulling, let's bring there trying
to figure out what kind of tension I had, if it was going to be difficult to attach the
actual pulley or not, you do have to stretch it, and this one is, this particular extension
cable is substantially shorter than the last, and I do have concerns that I'm not going
to be able to actually attach it, but we will see, I may need a longer spring as well, time
will tell, alright, so let's unhook the other cable, move my floor jack out of the way
because I'd use a hydraulic jack to actually get the door back open, it is a heavy, heavy
door, and without the assistance of the springs, it is nightmarish to disassemble, just position
the ladder, hopefully safer than we've been in the past, okay, my pliers out, and start
taking this guy apart, so we got to pull it out of that top bracket that we had previously,
so that involves basically undoing your little friction knot, I put this in a couple of
years ago, and this side held up, but the other one didn't, makes me wonder if I replaced
both or just one of them, but I don't remember, it would be nice to know, alright, so now I
got to get that out of the top of the track, friction has certainly done its job, this is
quite secure, there it goes, coming out the top, let me pull it out the bottom, carefully,
as we're barefoot on our ladder, holding the pulley down, so now I'm going to pull this
out the top, it should free the pulley that is going to attach to the spring, if I can pull
it out the top, friction has been the cable, there it goes, there it comes, nope, maybe, there it goes, alright, so
take this greasy old pulley, off and relocate it for the time being, there we go,
just realize I'm sitting here belching part in the burps, I just cut down eating a couple of burritos
for lunch, so that's my gift to you dear listener, okay, now to get this out of the bottom of the door,
so again, bottom of the door has a bracket on it, on that bracket is the lower section of this
cabling, so we'll take it off of the pulley and begin to extract it carefully,
I'm going to get my parts, and there are many, some vice grips for this,
it seems to want to come out, perhaps, yes, as the craftwork song says, okay, so our cable out of the bottom,
we're getting ourselves all greasy in the process, hopefully not losing an eye, push our cable
up the top, we can get the loop loose, let's take some strength, oh it's a good thing we're doing
this because there is some damage to the bottom of this cable, all right, cable extraction,
really complete, we'll be ready to install the new cable, wow this is gummy,
a couple of rough patches on this,
all right, now I need to back it out,
so I'm trying to pull that previous loop out, but the issue with the loop is you have to straighten
it enough to actually work it sleeve like that, so plenty of effort to move on, all right,
take our old gummy cables, the broken ones, and roll them up, and I will find a use for these,
I'm sure, I don't like to throw things away if I don't have to, certainly there's got to be a use
for steel cables, could lash something up or whatever, all right, so we'll stow these to the side,
we can utilize them later, clean our hands a little bit because we've made a mess here,
all right, so now the job is to install the other new short cable, which I hope is not too short,
if it is, I'm either going to have to get larger springs or larger extension cables because
as heavy as this door is, I'm not confident putting in something that I have
coupled together myself that would get nasty, all right, so let's install the second cable,
so once again we get our cable and we compress the loop for the best we can to feed it through the
bracket on the bottom of the door, once we have fit it through the bracket we have to bend the
loop back up over itself and then we feed, we can get a hold of it, we feed the end of the cable
through the loop, the other end of the cable, the real loop over the top, well first we go to
the loop once we've gotten through the loop we go over the top of the track and into the pulley
above the door, so, all right, we have said through, now we need to get behind the pulley,
okay, I said get behind the pulley, not in the front of the pulley,
so, all right, we're attached in behind the pulley, pull out our additional line, attach the
second pulley which will be attached to the door, so we feed our line through there,
this pulley is 10 kinds of greasy gross, okay, now we've got those three holes for our friction
knot, we go in through the top, I think this is about the same height up through the bottom,
leaving a space for our knot down through the top and then we pull through,
and then zip it up and then go back through the same knot, if you look at the instructions on
these things they'll show you how to do it, I'm telling you it is the most, it's the red of the
least confidence inspiring knot I think I've ever seen, but you know it's worked for years, and again
the thing that failed was not the knot, but the, the uh, the face of the door, so that's exciting,
all right, so now we try to hook up our pulleys, I'm probably going to have to use vise grips for
this because it looks like I'm going to have to extend the spring, I'm not really excited about
doing this, because everything's greasy, very greasy, and I appear to have slipped out of the
pulley that I was working with, so, all right, so we got to put it back around the pulley on the top,
I hope we don't slip out, you know, this will actually work in my favor if I attach it and then
loop it back around the pulley, sorry, getting my hydraulic jack out of the way,
but I think I'm going to try having it looped on the pulley first, so let me fix that mistake,
here, behind the pulley,
okay, I suppose I should have some sort of preface that like you should be wearing safety goggles,
you should not be doing this barefoot, you should be, etc, etc, use common sense folks,
don't be like me, all right, so now we grab our spring that we don't have enough strength to pull,
yep, well that settles it, my cables are too short, it's all there is to it,
I guess that's going to end of this episode because I do not have extension cables long enough,
which means I'm going to need to leave my garage door open and extended for a while,
until I can find some long enough cables, well there's a home improvement failure,
the old adage of measure twice and cut once was not heated today my friends,
so I may end up recording another episode after this at some point, to
talk about proper installation of appropriately sized cables, all right friends with that,
I'm going to close this episode and before I do so ask that you record an episode for HBR
because we could use all we can get, thanks for listening,
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