Sound dampening mat helps slightly for road noise, but it's mostly for improving sound quality from speakers. Fatmat is a BAD idea inside the car. It will smell like tar for months, and maybe even forever. Dynamat has no smell at all and sticks much better. It's worth it. Make sure you install it well by using a roller. Heat gun would be even better, although not needed.
You can spend your money on the commercial stuff "fatmat", "brownbread" etc... but the only thing those materials are is asphault sheeting. There is no other way to get the "rattle" to go away except weight. Now if you just have stuff clanking around, just try a few layers of the Grace (the company) Ice and water guard, and seal all your doors and panels. The smell goes away in a week at worse, and it'll smell the first hot day, and then be gone. All the auto manufacturers use this stuff in the cars when they're built anyways, you're just adding more of it.
You can get asphault sheeting much cheaper at other locations. But they will not cut down on road noise to any signifigance. You need something to absorb the high pitched sounds like jute, the cheap carpet padding you can find at home depot, don't get the rubber stuff. I would use asphault sheeting to seal my doors and openings, and then use the jute on the inner panel. I have done this, it works well, cost less than 100$ for 100 sq feet of asphault sheeting (grace ice and water guard) and 100 sq. feet of "jute" the fabric type carpet padding.
I'm planning to put some type of sound deadening material in my car... Ocelaris, that fiberglass stuff ur talking about, how much does it go for and does it smell like anything?? bad that is?? not like asphalt? btw, i just wanna kno wut ppl have in their car to keep road noise down? does it work?? thanx for the help guys
For road noise, you're gonna need lots of sound absorbing (not dampening material). Check out v- and l-comp from www.b-quiet.com. I opted not to do this, because all that weight adds up. A single layer of dynamat already weighs ALOT. I think changing the tires will make a good difference.
I'm planning to put some type of sound deadening material in my car... Ocelaris, that fiberglass stuff ur talking about, how much does it go for and does it smell like anything?? bad that is?? not like asphalt? btw, i just wanna kno wut ppl have in their car to keep road noise down? does it work?? thanx for the help guys
Well, for sound absorption, gearbox is right, there are commercial varieties of vinyl/foam/asphault/lead sandwiches etc... that are probably the best sound absorption available. I worked for a company that did home theatre installs for the rich in famous, like the Redskin's owner... anyways, what they use in their sound proofing materials is compressed fiberglass, I have 2 sheets of the stuff in my apartment, and it will suck up almost any noise. The problem with compressed fiberglass is that it's rigid. So probably the next best thing would be if you could compress ALOT of fiberglass into openings and/or wherever, but that is kinda ridiculous, so a nice alternative that isn't pokey, is the cheap carpet padding generically called "jute" because it looks like it's woven out of millions of different materials, kinda greyish. This stuff works pretty well, and is very pliable. There is already a layer of this stuff under all of your carpeting... I added a second layer everywhere, and it helped alot.
In home theaters, they seal and tie down anything that will vibrate, i.e. loose drywall by double drywalling... and then they'll line the entire thing with that compressed fiberglass see this place: http://www.insulationworld.com
And then they coat it with a nice fabric on top... I'll give you the analogy in our cars... Seal everything. anywhere air can leak in, sound can leak in. So any panels that have outer skins and inner skins, seal with some vinyl or asphaultic sheeting (asphaltic is 10x cheaper), also any loose plastic pieces can be kinda tied or strapped down with the sheeting. Then I put a layer of jute on the inside of the doors, and all panels.
The Jute is light, the jute is cheap, jute works great.
The catch with jute is that you can't let it get wet, it will mold, so that's why I reccomend the sealing of the exterior panels. Oh and I'll put a plug in again for Grace "Vycor" or "Ice and water gaurd" it has plastic backing. much easier to apply than the foil based, and the plastic stretches, so when you apply it, it doesn't tear, and you don't have any aspahult exposed (the smelly part) except the very edges. Do a good job and make 2 or 3 layers and you will only have a little exposed edges, which of course you could duct tape over if you were real anal about the smell, but I never noticed it, my wife complained the first time it got hot, but she says it went away after that.
Hard things transmit noise, soft things absorb... Best to understand basically how it works rather than to just buy product X... because I've seen so many clubRSX idiots put 3 layers of fat mat on their floors... IDIOTS... one claimed that there was no "OEM" asphaultic sheeting... I graciously took his picture of his fat mat install, and circled the part he had not covered on the floor (read wasted 100$ on nothing) where there was a strip of opening... low and behold the asphault sheeting was there. Not to sound pretentious, but there are alot of people who can throw $$ at a problem and not think about it... I probably could be that kinda person, but I would never want to pay to not think, ok well we all do sometimes, but when you want the best no matter what, you have to think about it, and when it comes down to getting results, throwing $ at a problem just won't get you the best results.
In the very beginning, about the dynamat extreme losing everything... well, dynamat extreme is a vinyl sheet, not asphault, so no smell, but no weight either. Imagine lots and lots of thick electrical tape, and that's what Vinyl sheets are... if it smells, it probably weighs alot if it doesn't, it's probably vinyl. And they all stink, to certain degrees some are less stinky, but it's so subjective, you can believe what you want. I call it all the same.
Sorry if it sounds like I have an attitude, I'm used to RSX owners with an attitude and $$ to back it up. Just used to having to wail against the man who tries to talk trash about the informational part of sound deadening because they bought 300$ of brand X on a whim and now vehemetnly defend their decision which lacks merit in many respects. You can get the best for alot of $ no doubt, but for 100$ and alot of time and thinking it over, you can get 95% of the best... and most people who drop major loot over sound deadening are using it so recklessly that they will never come close to matching the results that somebody with 100$ and alot of effort will produce. /rant off
I just bought the Grace Company "Ice and Water Guard" at lowes for 62.00 after tax. It is really easy to work with and you get so much. I haven't put my box back in yet but I have noticed a huge difference just by banging the trunk parts with my fist. So far I have three layers of the "Ice and Water Guard" , rammed half inch carpet padding in every hole and then I am going to lay the carpet padding on top of everything in the trunk and reinstall the oem carpet. This will have to make a huge difference I hope, I know I will still have to locate minor rattles here and there, like around the taillights an so on. You guys are awesome for putting this info on here, Thank you.
Great, please post commentary on the smell too... I can say the sound deadening is good and people probably will take my word for it, but smells, everybody has their own preferences/dislikes and it didn't bother me, but some people it may bother.
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So is jute just carpet foam padding that you use for a house? I have that stuff all over the floors under the stock carpet.
Yes my Civic Si had a type of Jute from the factory under my stock carpet. I added another layer myself... but probably could get away without it, I need to put some on the firewall, but that's kinda behind the dash
But Jute is not foam, i.e. the stuff with the bubbles in it that most people have under their home carpets... foam usually is less helpful in sound deadening, the fabric type stuff is what you are looking for, it's cheaper than the foam stuff. The idea is mass and lots of seperate particles to absorb and vibrate away the energy of the sound... so foam is one big piece and can't dissipate the sound energy as well as individual fibers.
Here is a good way you can think of sound absorption... Think of the ocean, and a beach, and if you've ever seen beaches that have eroded, and they put huge boulders or stones along the edge, those are the comparisons to look at. The waves of the ocean are the sound energy, and the boulders and the sand are our sound dampening materials. So with a beach, there are quadrillions of tiny particles, and each particle take's it's hit of the wave and kinda rubs it's neighbor, and makes a little friction. Add up all that friction, and that is how the sand diffuses all the energy that the waves make. With the boulders (bad for saving beach erosion) each boulder is so big that the wave being fluid, it jsut moves out of the way and deflects the energy elsewhere... it doesn't absorb anything, it just bypasses it.
So when someone reccomends putting the hard foam in the doors, that would be the equivalent of using boulders on a beach to protect from erosion.. it just plain speeds up erosion and noise transmission. Hard foam does not individually vibrate so it transmits instead of losing energy to friction.
Compressed Fiberglass is the equivalent of beach sand... individual particles which by themselves are hard, but they are small enough to absorb the energy and vibrate their neighbors hence absorbing the noise.
The Jute is our best cheap alternative having lots of nylon/cotton strands which work similarly to compressed fiberglass... and when I say compressed fiberglass, I don't mean like the stuff you make custom sub boxes out of, I mean like the pink rolls you put in walls, except it's compressed to be very dense. see here:
Well I have finished all the main parts of sound deadening for the trunk ie. floor, walls, and taped off all holes except for the lid which I will get too later. I cannot believe the difference this made. I am running two Orion XTR3 dvc's series parallel to a zr360 kicker and a 1 farad capacitor, it can be loud as f@ck, and it helped very much. As for the smell of the Grace company, I duct taped the edges and put 8lb carpet padding on top of that and the smell dissipated.
I have one question my spoiler still vibrates, will filling the lid with carpet padding then tapping off take care of that?
Well I have finished all the main parts of sound deadening for the trunk ie. floor, walls, and taped off all holes except for the lid which I will get too later. I cannot believe the difference this made. I am running two Orion XTR3 dvc's series parallel to a zr360 kicker and a 1 farad capacitor, it can be loud as f@ck, and it helped very much. As for the smell of the Grace company, I duct taped the edges and put 8lb carpet padding on top of that and the smell dissipated.
I have one question my spoiler still vibrates, will filling the lid with carpet padding then tapping off take care of that?
Thanks for all the help guy's
The best way to take care of that option is to use tuff stuff expanding foam it fills in great and wont add weight to your ride.
The best way to take care of that option is to use tuff stuff expanding foam it fills in great and wont add weight to your ride
There are two holes underneath the spoiler, shoot the foam inside? I have used foam before and did not like the out come. What other options are there with out removing the spoiler?
