High Lift Garage Door Conversion - Cable Routing

[71dsp]

I just had my 18'x8' garage door setup converted to a high lift to clear my new 4 post lift. My garage has 10' ceilings, and the installers said they were able to get 13" of lift (which wasn't as much as I hoped, but that's a different story).

The cables that run to the drums on the torsion bar now end up in front of the garage door panels as the door closes. Before (and on the other door that we have that wasn't touched) the cables have plenty of clearance and never get close to the door panels.

The drums appear to be pushed all the way over to the brackets for the torsion bar. Installer claims it's normal. I want to verify because I'm not too crazy about it as now the door has a larger gap than normal between the seal and the door on the outside.

I'm tempted to put some washers between the door and the rollers to push the door toward the seal (there's 1/4" to 3/8" of play with the door closed), but that'll push against the cable.

So I'm trying decide what to do next, and could use some informed opinions.

 

[nharris300]

Seems like might be different depending on door this is how my cable runs. These are 8 ft carriage house doors if this helps.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

 

[Jrad235]

Definitely not normal for the cable to run in front of the door panel, but sounds like they need different parts for a proper install. Post pictures please.

 

[Jazzman442]

Would you mind telling what it cost for the High Lift? I have had a few dealers here and they never give me an estimate.

 

[Jlbc212]

From viewing the posted pictures it appears that the cables run along the sides of the door panels. That's normal for a high lift door.

 

[bulletpruf]

Would you mind telling what it cost for the High Lift? I have had a few dealers here and they never give me an estimate.

I had one installed for $1500. Used existing garage door. Installed Liftmaster 8500 and high rise tracks. I could have done it myself and saved several hundred, but the install was done well.

 

[71dsp]

Would you mind telling what it cost for the High Lift? I have had a few dealers here and they never give me an estimate.

This one ran me $1,350 from a company I've used a number of times for garage door related items, but never had them do anything this extensive. They replaced the entire rail setup, removed and reinstalled the opener, replaced a few hinges and all that. I'm not 100% happy with the install, and will likely do some tweaks myself because while what they did is functional, some of it is haphazard and not to my standards.

Definitely not normal for the cable to run in front of the door panel, but sounds like they need different parts for a proper install. Post pictures please.

Here are some pics. One thing I noticed is that on my other door, the gap between the inner edge of rail and the garage door is 5/8". On the high lift door, it's 3/8" in some areas an others are as close as 1/4".

Here is the top of the door, where you can see the cable is in front of the door, not next to it.

Close up of the top:

Angled shots of the same side:

A pic of the high lift drum. Since there's only 13" of lift, the cable is already wrapped around the drum 3 times when the door is fully closed.

View of the other side with the high lift rails and high lift drum:

Some other stuff that I'm not terribly pleased with - maybe I'm being nit picky, but for $1350, I expected better workmanship.

BTW, plan is to clean up the sheetrock around the garage door and rails then paint.

However, since I didn't get the rails as high as I wanted, I'm thinking that I'm going to angle the horizontal rails upward, like it's following a roof pitch rail. Just enough to get the garage door just under the ceiling when it's fully open.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[71dsp]

I’m tempted to try moving the rails outward, pushing the pulleys outward as far possible, and sloping the rails upsward. By my calcs, the rails would be sloped upward about 4.8 degrees (6” rise over 72”).

 

[OldNeons]

I have had similar experience with "less than professional" door installers. It seems it's almost the norm for much of their "work" to be considered "hack" to many of us? I'm sure there are craftsmen out there in this field, but I think they may be in the minority.

I'm shopping high lift doors myself and hope to get higher than you did with my 8' tall doors and 10' ceiling. I'm hoping to use 20" radius track. It's definitely not something that most people are willing to take the time to figure out and make look/work nicely. Good luck.