Sound Dampening

[cam2Xrunner]

Though this might be useful posted here as well.

http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/showt ... ge=1&pp=15

There's been a couple of posts with ?'s refferring to what material to buy, where to buy it and how much is it. Hopefully this will help someone with their ?'s

First off I'd like to point out that the peal and seal stuff from Home Depot is pretty thin and has been said that it doesn't stick as well as some of the other products. Also you can get better quality prducts for not too much more money at all, maybe even cheaper.

I was reading a past post that stated peal and seal cost around 12-15 bucks for a 6"x25' roll. Which is about 12 1/2 sq ft. Roughly a dollar per sq. foot.

To get an idea of how much is needed to completely dampen a car take my 99 camry for example. I had 1-2 layers on the entire trunk and trunklid. 1-2 layers on the whole floor, 2 layers on the rear deck. The entire roof was matted, I did have a sunroof, so more required if you dont have a sunroof. The front doors had 2 layers, 3 in some spots. The back doors were also done with 2 layers. The wheel wells were covered as well as the rear d pillar. Now that took a little more than 200 sq ft. Ensolite foam was also used in the doors. And I used the padding that goes under house carpeting to help stop the road noise as well.

Needless to say the car was FULLY dampened, no rattles, the doors felt like Mercedes doors, solid thump. The road noise was lowered considerably. I used raammat60 at the time, which is about the same thickness as Dynamat extreme.

Now for the different companies that make quality matting and some links.

*Raammat60 BXT Some of the best dampening you can buy. Said to be the stickiest and doesn't require heat guns.

www.raamaudio.com

ebay link

99 bucks for 62.5 sq ft.

*eDead Very good product as well, they offer the v.1 which is 45 mils thick(about the same thickness as peal and seal, but sticks better)
v1.SE is the better dampening material which is 70 mils thick. This is what I will be using in my X-Runner.

And eDead V3 which is a paint on application. This is good for coating the back of the door panel as well as the headliner and rear deck panel, or you can use this instead of the mat material.
http://www.edesignaudio.com/edead.htm
http://www.edesignaudio.com/forum_discount.htm

With the 20% discount it is one of the most inexpensive products out there. If you compare peal and seal to the v1 then the eDead is cheaper. The v1.SE will turn out to be a little more with shipping but it is a much better product. Also keep in mind the 20% discount pretty much covers the shipping charges.

Dynamat and Dynamat Extreme are twice the price of the previous two products and don't perform any better than them, so I cannot and will not reccomend it.

There are a bunch of other brands out there as well. Such as brownbread, second skin, fatmat, bquiet, cascade, scosche makes some. Most of them are 45 mils thich and the aren't as good as a deal as compared to the eDead's 70 mils.

Here's a couple of good links that might help with this topic.
http://www.icixsound.com/vb/article.php?a=1
http://www.cureline.net/lex/audio/howto_mat_install.htm

[cam2Xrunner]

quote:Originally posted by ramaudio
Doing an entire vehicle the way I recommend takes alot of time but worth every single minute to get it right. Normally it takes me 2 full days, 10 hours or so each to take it apart and put it all back together, this is with a huge amount of experience though.

I am fairly anal about it of course, when doing my own rigs I usually take a few more days and go over every wire, cable, any part that can make noise, it can't when I am done

"Here is what I recommend, this is from years of experience and alot of customer feedback, it works very well.

-Front doors, doors with speakers, remove door panel and plastic moisture barier, toss it in the trash.
-One layer of mat on most of the outer door skin, overlap the seems, add two more smaller layers, about 12" sq, behind the speakers. Then the same size piece of close cell foam on top of those layers(ensulite foam is best.
-Check for loose wires, cables, etc, inside the door, secure with foam tape, tie wraps, etc. build up the speaker mounting location by making a solid baffel that you can screw to the door then the speakers to it, MDF works great and easy to work with.
-Seal up the door access holes with a piece of tin, I use perforated aluminum, this gives the next layer of mat something to stick to and tightens up the midbass response.
-Install one layer of mat over the inner door metal, seal all air passages possible, cut the mat back around 1" from edge of door panel.
-Add a layer of 1/8" close cell foam, ensulite again is best but hard to find, to the top of the mat, cut around all mounting points, same for the mat, to make sure the door panel will fit back on ok, cut back around 1/2" from edge of panel.
-Tap on the back of the door panel, being plastic it will have resonate areas. Add patches of mat to those areas until it sounds deadened, usually about 1/4 to 1/3 of the surface is enough, install the panel and test the the door, slam it a few times and listen for rattles, etc.

Rear doors, as the front, if they have speakers in them.
Doors without speakers, just mat the inner door metal, covering the access holes, like above no need to mat the outer door skin.
Rear side panels, outer metal skin, foam, varies from vehicle to vehicle, try to seal up the best you can like the doors.
Rear hatch, same as above.

Floor, One layer everywhere, tap on the floor and add a second and sometims a third layer to the resonate areas only, any more is a waste of mat and effort, once and area is deadened, there is nothing more to gain with adding more mat.
-Some tend to over use the mat in some areas and not enough in others.
-Add a layer of 1/4" close cell foam or two layers of 1/8" then the factory carpet, done!

Notes:

Doors, I usually add a 1" sq steel thin wall tube behind the speaker baffle, mounted diagonally, I use self taping screws to drill through the factory inner door metal and into the tubing. This really stiffens up the speaker mounting area and improves midbass response.

If you want to go all out on the floor, you can add do a layering effect over the really resonate areas of the floor. One layer of mat, a layer of foam, another layer of mat then another layer of foam, only use 1/8" foam so the floor does not get to high for the carpets to fit back in. This method will absorb even more accoustical energy but mainly used for all out comp car installs.

Roof, not usually needed, least results, alot of effort, once the rest is done, test and decide what to do. On a black or very dark vehicle, a tremendous amount of heat build up can occur on the roof, one layer is the maximum I would use the cover it then add a solid layer of close cell foam.

If you have an exceptionally loud exhaust and or tires, they are the worst offenders as they permeate the air around the vehicle and penetrate from many areas. Sometimes they have to be changed no matter how well matted, just want you to be aware of this issue."

The most important part, have fun, really mean that
Rick
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I like to do a little bit more than that, such as the roof, which I feel is a very important area to dampen. It does help lower road noises as well as stop any rattling/resonance of the panel. My rear door had oneto two layer's on the outer skin, covered in ensolite foam. The inner part of the door where the door panel is against had one to two layers where it overlapped.

I also like to use the paint on deadener on the back of the door panel itself as well.
When you mat the floor and trunk you will notice some road noise lowered. The sound barrier foam helps drown out the road noise frequencies that the matting doesn't block.

[Yanks0114]

I used Raammatt over my dynamat xtreme, and the stuff was just as good

I was very impressed

Here is a great link on how to install raammat
http://www.cureline.net/lex/audio/howto_mat_install.htm

Great post cam

[cam2Xrunner]

Thanks yank. I agree Raammat is very good.

My friend has a '05 tacoma , I'm going to do a pictoral DIY of sound proofing and I'll post it in the Tutorials. It should help some people even if it is for a Tacoma.

That guy Retrodrive with the LS400 has an Insane system and a badass car. he's got a 2jz-gte swapped in there. Awesome. BTW I have that link in the first post.

[Yanks0114]

BTW I have that link in the first post.

Woops. Missed that part

[Delshin]

Dang what a process, just afraid of snapping those 3 dollar a piece platic fastners while tackling that project. When I had my gt4 celica, I snapped all kinds of things trying to get panels off and swore to leave it alone from then on out.
Any place to replace the platic screws aside from toyota. They want all kinds of money for 5 screws.