Worn pulleys
A grooved or seized sheave is the most common reason a cable wore out early. New cable over an old pulley is money spent twice.
Why it is always the cable
A lift has two cable runs and they work every single time the boat goes up or down. They bend around pulleys under load, they spool, and depending on where your lift sits they spend part of their life wet. Galvanized wire rope handles that well — for a while.
What makes cables different from the rest of the lift is where they wear. The damage happens inside the pulley grooves, at the clamps, and in the short section that takes the sharpest bend, which are exactly the places you cannot see from the dock. By the time a cable looks bad from where you stand, it has usually been bad for a season.
And it does not fail gently. A cable is fine, and fine, and fine, and then a strand lets go and the rest follow quickly. That is why we treat it as a scheduled item rather than a repair.
How to tell yours are due
You can check most of this yourself in a few minutes, with the boat down and the lift at rest.
- Broken strands. Run a gloved hand along the cable. Individual wires standing proud — sometimes called fishhooks or meat hooks — mean the cable is already failing. One is enough.
- Rust bleeding from the clamps. Staining that runs down from a fitting usually means corrosion is working from the inside out, where you cannot inspect it.
- Flat spots, kinks or a section that has gone stiff. A cable should be uniform along its length. Anywhere it is not is where it will part.
- One side lifting faster than the other. If the bunks are going out of level, something in the drive is slipping, stretching or binding — and it is worth finding out which before it becomes a repair.
- The cable riding off a pulley, or wearing a groove into a bracket. That eats a new cable as quickly as it ate the old one, so the cause has to be fixed at the same time.
- Not knowing when they were last done. If you bought the house with the lift on it and nobody can tell you, assume they are older than you would like.
What the job involves
Cables, and everything they touch
Both runs get replaced together. Replacing one and leaving the other means coming back for the second before long, and a lift with one new cable and one tired one does not sit level.
Cable, clamps and thimbles are only ever replaced, never reused. Thimbles are 5/16" either way — a 1/4" thimble is too small for the job.
Older-style pulleys get inspected while everything is apart. Plenty of people take the opportunity to upgrade to the 3" four-ton yarding block we sell and fit, which is the same part we put on a new install.
Forty feet is the standard run. Fifty is available, and so are compounded and custom lengths where a dock needs them.
If a cable has already parted
Do not run the lift again to see what happens. A lift with one cable gone is carrying the whole boat on the other one, and the load is nowhere near where it was designed to sit.
Get the boat supported or in the water, leave the lift alone, and call us. A parted cable goes to the front of the conversation.
While we are there
What a cable call usually turns up
A cable rarely wears out on its own. Something is often helping it along, and finding that is most of the value of the visit.
A motor that stalls
Around this lake that is usually the wiring, not the motor. Docks built twenty-odd years ago were wired for lighter motors than the ones boats need now.
Bunks out of level
If the lift has been running uneven, the bunks and the boat have been taking that too. Worth setting right while it is all apart.
Common questions
How often should lift cables be replaced?
There is no single number, and anyone who gives you one has not seen your lift. It depends on how much you use it, whether the cable sits in the water, and how exposed your frontage is — a lift on open main-channel water works harder than the same lift in a back cove. What we would say is that cables are the wear item on a boat lift, and a look at them costs a few minutes while replacing them after one parts costs a rescue.
Can I just replace the one that broke?
We almost always recommend doing both. The two cables have done the same work for the same length of time, so the second is rarely far behind the first — and a lift running one new cable against one tired one does not sit level.
Do I need 1/4" or 5/16" cable?
Quarter-inch is the standard and covers the vast majority of lifts on this lake. Five-sixteenths is for wake boats and heavier vessels. If you are unsure which yours should be, tell us the boat and we will tell you — we are not going to sell you the heavier cable because it sounds better.
What does it cost?
It depends on the cable size, the length your lift needs, and what we find when the pulleys come apart. There is no list price and a number over the phone would be a guess. Describe the lift, or send a photo or two of the slip, and we can usually get close before we come out.
Do you do this in the off season?
Yes, and it is the better time to do it. A cable that is near the end costs the same to replace in November as it does in June. Done in the off season it happens on a schedule and nobody loses a weekend; done in June it is an emergency and the boat is stuck. If yours are on your mind, the quiet months are when we have the most room.
Where we work
Cables, anywhere on the lake
Lake Sinclair runs through three counties and we work all of them.