Panel Replacement for Antelope's 1990s Steel Doors

What It Costs

Most garages in Antelope went up around 1993, and the doors that came with those houses are steel sectional units - usually a 16-foot double for the two-car garage, sometimes a single 9-foot door on the side. These are raised-panel steel, not the wood or fiberglass you'd find on an older street, and that matters for pricing: steel sections are more standardized, so finding a matching panel is usually easier than matching a 1960s wood door.

What we can't do is quote a number here without seeing the door. Panel cost depends on whether your door is still in production, whether it's insulated or single-layer, and how many sections got hit - a single dented bottom panel from a bumper tap is a different job than a whole side crushed by a trailer backing in wrong. We price it after we're standing in front of it, not over the phone from a guess.

One honest limit: if your door is old enough that the manufacturer discontinued the panel profile, we'll tell you that up front rather than order something that won't match, and we'll talk replacement options instead of forcing a patch.

How Long You Are Without the Door

We run out of Folsom, about 12 miles from Antelope, so the first thing to plan around is that drive, not a same-day guarantee we can't make. If we have your exact panel in stock, the swap itself is usually a single visit. If it has to be special-ordered - common on doors from the early-to-mid '90s where the original line has been updated or dropped - you're looking at a wait on the part before we come back out.

In the meantime, a door missing a panel or two isn't always a door you have to leave open. Depending on which section is damaged and where, we can often secure the door closed and functional on the remaining panels until the replacement arrives. That's a judgment call we make on site, not something to assume.

The DIY Question

Steel sectional panels bolt in section by section, which makes this look like a weekend project. The part that trips people up isn't the bolts, it's the alignment - a panel that's even slightly out of square binds the rollers in the track, and on a 16-foot double door that strain shows up as a spring or cable failure a few weeks later, not immediately.

If you're swapping a single bottom panel on a door you're not insulated or wiring through, and you've got the exact matching part in hand, it's not an unreasonable DIY job. Where it stops being reasonable is anything involving the top section near the opener arm, or any section on a door that's still under spring tension you haven't released properly. That's where we see the worst injuries, and it's also where a wrong move costs more than the service call would have.

What Can Go Wrong

Antelope sits in a moderate-heat climate band, and steel panels that face full afternoon sun for twenty-plus summers develop a specific problem: the steel expands and contracts enough, cycle after cycle, that the seams between sections start to separate or the panel itself bows slightly outward. You often see this before any dent or impact - a door that looks fine from the street but doesn't sit flush in the track anymore.

The other common failure on a 1993-era door is a mismatch between the original panel finish and any replacement part ordered today - manufacturers have changed coatings and ribbing patterns over thirty years, so a panel ordered without checking the model number can leave one section visibly different from the rest. We check the model plate before ordering, every time, specifically to avoid that.

How to Book

If a panel on your Antelope door is dented, bowed, or no longer sitting flush, start with the Antelope service page for what we cover here, or look at how panel replacement works more broadly on the Folsom panel replacement page. Either way, have your door's model number ready if you can find it on the inside of the top section - it's the single fastest way for us to tell you whether your panel is still in production or needs a workaround.

Frequently asked questions