PICS IN THE LINKS AT THE END OF THIS POST
Whether it's defects, over excursion, or a cat with claws.....Tensil lead wires can break. You tensil is the nice little wire going from the speakerwire terminal on teh woofer into the cone. It's typically gonan be a very flexible wire and it's length is just right so that it doesnt rip from shortness nor slap the cone too bad from being too long. You're better off running a whole new tenil wire if you have abreak, the wire will bejust slightly too short for the solder joint if you try and repair the one that broke. you can try and go for it, but a well repaired tensil lead can withstand abuse //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif
you need new:
-new tensil wire. any other wire wont work, ive tried lol...You can try and contact woofer companies and see if for a small fee they can send you some tenil wire (they might send u some for free if you're lucky). i got mine from RE back in the day. Id imagine that they'd do it again for a small purchase.
-epoxy, home depot has a wide range of these, any kind of extra strength epoxy or jb weld will work. CA glue is highly renownd around here for speaker work
-soldering gun (get one that plugs into the wall, the butane powered ones dont get as hot as you want).
cut the tensil about 1mm or 2mm from the cone so just a tiny bit is showing.
you take a new tensil and solder it as best you can to the little piece coming out off the cone. dont over do it since you wanna minimize the extra weight thats going onto the cone. it's not alot of weight but its still a good idea to put enough on there so that its secure but not overkill.
after that, you take the epoxy and glue that soldered joint TO the cone right there. this is best done turning the whole sub upside down in most cases. reason being glue dripping. be careful not to let ANY epoxy/glue get on the spider (that would very very bad).
so after it dries basiclly youll have the tensil wire coming out of the spot glued to the cone. if you dont glue that solder joint to the cone itll rub against the cone and either come loose or damage the cone. the epoxy keeps it in place.
now you have to eyeball the correct length this tensil needs to be before you trim it and solder it to the terminals. best way to do this is compare it to another tensil thats normal/not broken. notice the good ones are just long enough to move with the cones excursion both in both directions. play with the cones suspension and use a clamp hold the wire to the terminal to see if you've picked a good spot to cut and solder. measure twice, cut once.
if the tensil is too long there'll be tensil slap and it'll damage the spider, cone, and/or also sound annoying as hell. if too short then it''ll break and youll have to do this bullshit all over again. your margin of error is pretty **** small. the spot where it leaves the cone isnt probly gonna be exactly where the original tensil came out of the cone.....so comensate for this. if the spot where the new tensil is a little above where the old spot is, then you'll want just that little more length on the tensil to make up of this spot being differant. once you get that length right, solder those tensils to the terminals. remember to let the epoxy set overnight.
Id done right this kind of repair can last a long *** time. i did this to 2 differant old style re xxx15 2 years ago. each one lasted the test of time. one of them is still playing fine in a friends car, the other one i had fun frying the voice coils and abusing the hell out of it......and the tensil repair job survived the heavy abuse better than the voice coil did //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif
Here's a link to some pics of this kind of repair job. The first link is essentially everything i just listed but with typing errors corrected.
http://www.caraudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=198896&highlight=xxx+tensil
http://www.caraudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=201790&highlight=xxx+tensil
All in all you can self fix your broken leads for around 30 bucks (more or less) if you have none of the supplies listed. It's not as hard as it seems, just take your time and keep a steady hand. i hope this is very helpful for you guys.
