Speaker Repair... getting started

[Centauri]

they are typically glued in place and can be removed with a heat gun or a damn good hair dryer with patiance

Begging to differ, but you will find that in most speakers the hole in both cone and spiders are exact size of coil former (which is smaller diameter than outside of coil) and the whole three are epoxied together (this point being subjected to most stress and heat) and therefore nearly impossible to separate, and definitely not possible through dust cap.

Wes,
If cone and coil are separated, then my guess is spider is still attached to coil and cone has torn, thereby snapping voice coil leads. The flexible lead in wires are usually soldered to voice coil wires on top of cone and sealed with blob of glue - a little acetone will clear that. If you can actually find ends of voice coil wires, and there is enough to solder to, then insert previouly mentioned plastic strips to hold everything, repair solder connections and epoxy the whole lot together (being careful to to glue the spacer strips) - will require patience!!

Cheers

[JOE DIRT®]

my interpretation was that there was a break to the terminal output and not the tinsel lead to the cone....ultimatley for that connection to break was due some thermal or mechanical stress and thus it being a 18 inch driver my gut feeling is that it was driven pretty hard

[Bull]

Usually a dead speaker, is a speaker with no damage u can see when it's essembled--- is a burnt out voice coil.
And a few cases of bass drivers i've found,the surround and cone won't move at all when pressed with the hand-- which has always been a burnt voice coil.
So if the speaker moves when u push you hand lightly down on the cone then the voice coil is not usually burnt.
So to detemine after this whether the voice coil or former is damaged in any way.Put your ear close to the centre of the cone, whilst u push your hand down on the cone and any scraping noises will be a damged vc/former.

Also the voice coil is sometimes attached to the tinsel leads by a thin wire between the voice coil and tinsel leads,if this thin wire between the tinsel lead and voice coil has snapped,the voice coil can appear to look fine whilst u wonder why it doesn't work.

To remove the surround and spider without damaging it you can buy some solution called debonder which softens up and breaks down glue bonds.
Maplin Electronics sell it by Rite-Lok Debonder and is cheap to buy.
The stuff is toxic
wear glothes,and use in well ventilated areas,ie outdoors, but NOT corrosive.