Dad calls me up and says the garage door fell on the Corvette. My son went over, supported the high side of the door with a plank between two step ladders, then used my new impact driver to pull all the hinges. We then carefully carried each panel away from the car.

The cable on one side broke and apparently the wheel things are not captured by the tracks. It’s a hurricane door with lots of steel beams bolted to it that make it heavy. Besides the fender, the headlight housing is cracked.

Ouch!!!
That hurts!!


From a Corvette owner

Wow. Ouch. Good thing nobody was hurt.

Seems like there should be some sort of safety built into garage doors such that they never fall just because a spring or cable breaks.

I agree. A simple breakage of a cable or spring should not allow the entire door to collapse.

I thought the wheels would have been held captive by the tracks, but apparently not.

Here's to hoping his insurance is good. That looks expensive, but I'm glad nothing was hurt that isn't replaceable/repairable.

That's really unfortunate, beautiful vette. The garage door should not fall just because the cable broke.

> 15 ft doors with torsion springs will fail if one cable breaks because the other cable is still under tension.
The asymmetric force will pull the door at an angle causing the rollers to leave the tracks. The door will fall as there is nothing to support it.

The roller tracks only have a the "curved raceway" for the rollers on the "load" side, and the "training side" is at a 90 degree and does not "trap/contain" the rollers.

It is how these door assemblies are designed.

Inspection of rollers, tracks, springs, cable drums, cables and openers are paramount to ensure safe and proper function of the doors.

(Having done quite a few installations and maintenance on overhead doors)


A boat should not capsize, just because a rogue wave is encountered.

Damn. What a shitty way to start the day.

I just glad my Dad wasn't under it when it happened.

Just an FYI for those that are as clueless me, the door is about 25 years old, the springs were professionally replaced 5 years ago or less, I don't know if the cables were replaced as well. The cables don't look old and they don't have any broken wires except for where the failure occurred.

Each cable has a loop that goes around a pin attached on each side of bottom panel. The loop on the one side was rusted and failed. The loop on the other side looks perfect which is weird because they were both under the same salty floodwaters for the same amount of time during Hurricanes Heleen and Milton. I had to replace the safety sensors twice and wish I had thought to take a close look at everything else that was underwater.

"Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix it".

Thank you for seeing the humor in that.

Sucks, like you glad your dad wasn't standing anywhere near it when it fell, those things are heavy and could inflict a lot of damage to a person.

Odd that the cable breaking would cause it to come off track, was he trying to open it, my daughters had one of those break at the bottom, it only kept the opener from being able to properly lift the door, didn't come off track.

He went home from church in his truck. He parks his truck outside, opened the garage door with the clicker, walked in the garage, and tried to close the door with the wall button.

He said it closed about halfway, so he hit the button again, and it opened. He hit the button a third time and as it was closing, all hell broke loose.

He made some calls this morning, got the garage door people coming, and he’s in a much better mood today.

Well, that sucks! Glad he wasn't under it when it went.