It's not the current that kills them in the open circuit case; it's punchthrough of the junctions due to excessive voltage. In addition, some power amps will oscillate with no load, which can do a lot of "interesting" things.

You're wasting your effort - I already said that and it was pretty much ignored.

 

Unless you crank up the volume not much will happen + any decent radio / amplifier drives the output stage off or otherwise isnt affected.

 

Ian,
Your thoughts not ignored by me. Based on your experience I'm leaving radio turned off until speaker re-connected...BTW, Would a 10 watt, 8 ohm resistor suffice to simulate the load?
Thank You...

 

I have the 8 ohm speaker out while replacing a power window motor. Does this harm the audio output stage in any way if I play the radio while driving?

simple question, lots of pedantic answers

put the balance across to the speaker side that IS connected, that gives you nil output on the disconnected side.

thoughts - why do you need to disconnect the speaker to change a window motor? i can't see the motor being attached to the speaker

 

Hole for speaker provides hands access to the motor - Ford design?

 

Just looking at this from a logical business point of view...

If modern solid state amps died from running no-load, we would see more legal-eeze to that effect.
Not to mention, an open circuit fault is the most likely failure mode, there would be a lot of pissed off customers screaming about this.

 

A properly designed solid-state amp will not destroy itself with no load connected. Of course, we can envisage an amplifier so poorly designed that this is the case but you wouldn't want such an amp in your car, bearing in mind that an in-car amp requires a much greater degree of robustness and protection than a domestic amp.

 

Ian,
Your thoughts not ignored by me. Based on your experience I'm leaving radio turned off until speaker re-connected...BTW, Would a 10 watt, 8 ohm resistor suffice to simulate the load?
Thank You...

Should be just fine - but its not the reactive load the amp was designed for, so not thrashing it is the best bet.