anyone ever do this to a speaker(s)?

I started getting low frequency distortion in one of my Boston HD5 speakers...

thought it odd.. I don't push anywhere near the max power on these things...

tore the unit apart and got all scientific (I have a comprehensive electronics lab at home)

didn't find anything wrong with the crossover, and electrically, the woof and tweet were okay.

was about to do an audio output test with an oscillator...saw a gap between the cone and foam... bingo!

kits are available and there are videos on youtube.

several have you removing the dust cover from the coil so you can put in shims and center the cone.
all the kits I've seen for the HD5 just have the foam and no dust cover.

just wondering is it as easy as it seems and am I worrying too much about the dust cover issue?

I removed the dust cap when I refoamed 4 6.5" and 4 15" woofers. Yes it took longer but it guaranteed a working woofer.

Since I have a little more time to write.

I refaomed eight Earthquake Audio speakers that I had originally purchased in '92.  Great speakers except for the foam.  Based on everything I watched on You Tube and read on speaker forums, I carefully removed the dust cap with an x-acto knife.  Replacement caps are cheap and easy to install if you buy ones that are slightly larger than the originals.  In this case, I wanted to keep the company logo.

Clean the old foam off before doing anything.  You don't want it falling down into the magnetic gap if you have your dust cap removed.  Then remove the cap.  Shim.  I would run a bead of Aileene's Tacky glue around the cone and carefully place the foam in it before letting it dry for 24 hours.  Then I could glue the foam to the frame using the same glue and another 24 hours.  I could remove the shims and test the woofer with an old amp I had laying around before I glued the dust cap back on.  Repeat the same process on the next woofer.

About the glue.  Most of the refoam sites will sell you their "special" glue.  It's Aileene's.  Nothing more.  Take a look at some pictures from Reaction Audio's site - http://reaction-audio.myshopify.com/products/312x-powered-subwoofer.  Those are from the build house that supplies them with some high end subs.  You can see the gold glue bottle in the background.  Pierce Audio Products is the build house - http://www.pierceaudioproducts.com/.  Finally, I wouldn't recommend a glue without using it.  Here's a slideshow of a custom sub I had built by PSI Car Audio.  They supplied the recone kit per my specs and I just dropped it into the frame.  You can see in the pictures where I have the same glue bottle.  http://s3.photobucket.com/user/rlj5242/slideshow/PSI%2012%20Sub  I pound that sub with a 1,000 watt Powerbass digital amp every time I am in the car.  Two years later, there is no sign of the glue failing.

cool, thanks for taking the time to be more in depth

I have done quite a few, it's very easy if you are at all mechanically inclined.  Some of the kits included adhesive, some did not.  In the case of no adhesive, I used regular Elmers white glue, years of use no sign of failing.  

I have some glue, maybe I'll give it a try.. the cone came disconnected from the foam, it's not torn or anything.  worth a try while waiting on parts, I guess.

I would check with the Speaker Place in Rochester NY:  https://www.newfoam.com/

These guys specialize in refoams, and can usually set you up with more appropriate stuff than the generic stuff that most places sell.  There are a number of different foams that the OEMs use, and if you don't use the same stuff, it'll change the characteristics of your woofer.  For a subwoofer, that's usually not a big deal, but for the woofer in a full range speaker, it can have a significant impact on the frequency response and the phase response around the crossover frequency.

I bought a set of foams from The Speaker Place for my Boston Acoustics T830s and they worked well.  Before & after frequency response sweeps were virtually identical.

Most woofer foam is extremely soft and does very little to impact the mechanical parameters of the speaker (Qms).  As far as subwoofers go, you couldn't be farther away.  Just look at the different surrounds that each use.  TC Sounds uses a high roll, thin rubber surround.  Sundown uses a wide roll foam or a super huge foam roll depending on the model.  Acoustic Elegance uses neoprene and makes their foam in house with their own vacuum press.

I have a set of JBLs from the 70s that the foam disintegrated. I was looking for new speakers when I found this site.

http://www.simplyspeakers.com/jbl-speaker-foam-edge-repair-kit-fsk-10a.html

It wasn't hard to do, I just followed the video on their site. I was off on the first one, the cone was touching. But the glue wasn't too dry so I worked it is back off and tried again. It didn't look the best but it sounds great. the second one looks like new.