Poked a hole in the surround...

I guess there are some days where nothing goes right. Your self tapping screws keep stripping, and a 90' 300ZX rolls in and needs a complete re-wiring job for it's speakers and a new deck put in. Along the travels of the CD player, it didn't seem to be compatible with the bose factory system which was complete with its own amplifiers for EACH speaker. Solution? Re-Wire.

And upon the numerous panels (and there's lots of em) you finally reach your goal of having to put the speakers in. YAY. As you're putting your speaker in, your stubby phillips head slips off the half stripped factory screws and makes a small tear in the surround of a nice new set of RF Two-Way Speakers.

Now, this is the foam on the outer surrounding of the speaker, and it was a tear about the size of the width of your index finger nail. What do you do? Well, what I did was used 2-part, five minute epoxy on the tear.

Was there any other possible method that I could've used? I've known ppl to use hot glue (although i think it's stupid of them) and it's held subs together for a period of time. Was I right to use the epoxy, these were brand new speakers and there was no way that they were going to waste. It's been the stupidest most feared mistake by me. The customer was bloddy oblivious, heck, he watched me do it and he was like, man, I hate it when that happens. (I don't think he knew the severety and stupidity of what was done). And comments would be appreciated.

I think that's happened to all of us at one point in time.  It's too bad that our shop only has sheet metal screws that have a really wide head, and so none of those drill bit sleeves will work with any of our screws.  We do have some with smaller heads but they aren't the super pointy kind that works the best.

It's actually a really dumb thing and I'm bout to go out and buy my own screws.  For us, there is no way to prevent this except to hold the screw with one hand (if you have a free one) and to take our time.  Last time I did this, I used silicone sealant on both sides of the tear, and told the customer that there was a "weak spot" in the speaker that I had to fix with silicon.  and told him not to play the speakers very loud until it can dry overnight.  The guy has not come back yet and that was a while ago, so i';m assuming my method worked.

Depending on the severity of the tear/hole, even the crappiest speakers can sound a lot worse.  It happened to me one time with Jensen speakers, but it was almost like a rip about an inch wide.  You could definitely hear it cuz it was like a buzzing sound whenever the bass would hit.  So it doesn't always only affect high quality speakers.

It's funny when you see kids bringing in their sub-boxes and if you quickly look around the screw mounting holes on the sub, you can see many slices and dices and miscellaneous repairs. And, I am also guilty of this...