• NAXJA is having its 18th annual March Membership Drive!!!
    Everyone who joins or renews during March will be entered into a drawing!
    More Information - Join/Renew
  • Welcome to the new NAXJA Forum! If your password does not work, please use "Forgot your password?" link on the log-in page. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] if we can provide any assistance.

any cheap tricks for sound deadening?

db_ghost

NAXJA Forum User
Location
florida
hi guys! first time post! :) planning to really upgrade my sound system, trying to find out what can I do for my XJ to make it really quiet, in terms of really cheap materials for deadening sound for the entire interior. Any suggestions/alternatives? Any tips/tricks to layout the materials?
 
I saw this site for stuff that not only deadens sound, but acts as a thermal barrier as well (and we can all agree that we need that, right?). I have no idea what it costs - though I bet it isn't cheap. ANyone have any experience with this stuff?
http://www.coolcarllc.com/page.asp?ID=1
 
Im not familiar with that product. But if you want to go the cheapest route, go to your local home improvement center and pick yourself up a roll of Torchdown roof material, and a few cans of spray adhesive and youll have yourself 3/16" thick sound deadner that is the same material as Dynamat at about 1/10 the price and twice the thickness.

Spray deadners are a different story and are generally more expensive.

XJguy
 
XJguy said:
Im not familiar with that product. But if you want to go the cheapest route, go to your local home improvement center and pick yourself up a roll of Torchdown roof material, and a few cans of spray adhesive and youll have yourself 3/16" thick sound deadner that is the same material as Dynamat at about 1/10 the price and twice the thickness.

Spray deadners are a different story and are generally more expensive.

XJguy

torchdown roofing material? hmmm weird, because never thought it would be for a sound deadner, have you used it on your Cherokee yourself? Thanks for the tip! I will go check it out! :)
 
db_ghost said:
hi guys! first time post! :) planning to really upgrade my sound system, trying to find out what can I do for my XJ to make it really quiet, in terms of really cheap materials for deadening sound for the entire interior. Any suggestions/alternatives? Any tips/tricks to layout the materials?

Just installed Fatmat, but my interior was already gutted on the floors. It's an aluminum backed rubber matting material. It went on quickly and it's not hard to use. Seems to have helped, but since I just put it on yesterday morning haven't had a chance to see if it will be enough to keep me from using earplugs going down the road. 36 square feet was enough to do 90 percent of the jeep. Depends on your idea of cheap, of course, and whether or not your interior is removable and all that. Myself, I herculined the entire inside and frankly, it didn't do that much, sound wise.
 
db_ghost said:
torchdown roofing material? hmmm weird, because never thought it would be for a sound deadner, have you used it on your Cherokee yourself? Thanks for the tip! I will go check it out! :)

Ive done it to two Jeeps, and my brother in 3 of his cars. The thing is youll probably have to wai till warm weather to install it so you can leave it out in the sun to really soften. As with all asphalt/tar based sound deadening material, it hardens with cold weather making them very unwieldly to work with. Also unless you can really form the material to the contours of the metal you wont get all the sound proofing you seek. Ive used the stuff from Parts-express before I discovered this stuff, it is thin and brittle and still comes out expensive.

If money is no object then I would go with Cascade engineering's roll-on and spray-on deadening.

XJguy
 
A ton of noise come through the bottom of the doors and the seams of the unibody. Getting a few cans of Great Stuff foam insulation and sealing up the bottom of the doors and the seams behind the body panels really quiets things down.
 
check these guys out. http://soundproofing.org/
I haven't ordered formt hem yet but there product looks good and is cheap as hell compared to dynamat, fat mat, etc etc even compared to hardware store elcheap-o fix it sound deadeners like peel and seal or expansion foam etc. They have most stuff in 4 sq ft increments for around $1 -$2 a sqaure foot. compare to dyna mat at 18-22 bucks for two speaker panels patches of 11" for you door. this is quality stuff FAA APROVED AND EVEN SOME OF IT IS MARIN GRADE suitable for floor surfaces it is so tuff. check it out.
 
Lucas said:
A ton of noise come through the bottom of the doors and the seams of the unibody. Getting a few cans of Great Stuff foam insulation and sealing up the bottom of the doors and the seams behind the body panels really quiets things down.

So where does the water go that drains down through the doors....escaping past the window seals? There is a reason that there are drain holes in the bottom of the doors and body panels. Fill them full of foam and you may have just created an instant rust problem as most foams act like a sponge, retaining water.
 
For those of you surprised that roofing material can be used as sound deadeners: Most sound deadeners are nothing more than a dense,flexible substance with adhesive backing. This does nothing more complicated than adding mass to surfaces that would otherwise be easily vibrated by the sound - causing sound to be transfered or reverberated. By adding mass to those surfaces - the sound is unable to cause those areas to sympathetically vibrate. Dynamat has very little actual absorbtion to it - it is primarily just a mass-adder (that's the scientific term I'm sure!). There is more to sound deadening cars than just this, of course: but due to the number and surface area of thin, easily-vibrated plastic panels in most cars it is one of the most effective. It has to placed in the right area to be effective: on whatever surfaces tend to vibrate. Hope this helps...
 
XJEEPER said:
So where does the water go that drains down through the doors....escaping past the window seals? There is a reason that there are drain holes in the bottom of the doors and body panels. Fill them full of foam and you may have just created an instant rust problem as most foams act like a sponge, retaining water.


Great Stuff sets up like a plastic and doesn't absorb water. In the back body panels no water seeps past the windows, and it actually seals water out from the outside if you cross deeper streams. In the doors the water rolls off the mound of foam in there and exits elsewhere. A lot of the sound deadening comes from making a solid non-resonating structure from the hollow doors and unibody.
 
Back
Top