bass bin enclosure upgrade

[stix342]

I have 2 old peavey 118 Sub HC subwoofers/enclosures that came with BW 18 inch speakers in them new. We lost those speakers due to age and decided to replace them with the peavey low rider 18 much more powerful speakers. All has worked OK for awhile but lately we have lost the leads off the lowrider from speaker cone to terminals as if speaker was moving too far. We are pretty sure the old cabinet is not meant or tuned for the lowrider but rather for the much less powerful 18 Black Widow. My question is can I modify or how do i modify that cabinet to run the low rider 18 in a more proper fashion that won't keep ruining the speakers. I have put a new basket in one and just recently lost the other lowrider in the other speaker. Is it as simple as new vents and some padding or will that enclosure never work with the low rider......help! thanks stix

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

I haven't looked at speaker design stuff in 25 years or more, but when I was doing it we needed the free air resonance of the speaker to design a cabinet. However, most every manufacturer of raw speakers freely gave away cabinet designs, to get you to buy their speakers. Check with Peavey. If the internal volume of one fo the cabs they have for the speaker you want to use is similar to what you have, then you could try to size the ports to match the ports on that cab design, to create the proper amount of back pressure to support the speaker you have. That is all a very McGiver approach. I'd probably just get the plans and some plywood and run up the correct sub for the speaker to get the best performance from it.