MurderMat Review! 92 Honda Civic Hatchback

I’l l start this review with a description of the vehicle. It is a 92 Honda Civic Hatchback with a swapped motor, header, full exhaust, NO interior, and a lower tighter suspension. As you can imagine, with the car gutted and lowered, and with a full exhaust incorporating a “Thrush” muffler, the exhaust drone/road noise is unbearable. I have literally had ringing in my ears for a day after taking a trip in this car.

Winning the MurderMat giveaway finally gave us a chance to get this car quiet on the road and even made the idea of adding a sub-stage possible, which wasn’t even considerable thought prior to giveaway.

Let me now mention that we applied this deadener while it was roughly 50 degrees outside, by
hand, which is definitely NOT optimal. I thought that it was going to be a tough task since most mats are rather stiff when cold, and initially I thought that the MurderMat was stiff, until I removed the paper backing. It then became nicely flexible and easy to apply.

We thoroughly cleaned the dust off of the areas that we planned to apply MurderMat and started going to town. It easily pressed into tight corners and around irregular curves. Since our main concern was simply eliminating road noise/exhaust drone, and since we were working with probably a quarter of the deadener that we really thought we needed, we tackled the rear end of the car first, completely covering the spare tire well and floorboard up to the center of the car. We had 2 thick pieces left and decided to split them in half and add a half to each door and a half to each side panel.

Results:
Before turning the car on, we decided to listen to the sound system to see if there was any recognizable difference. The system consists of a newer Sony Xplod head unit and Infinity Reference 6.5s in the doors and 6x9’s in the side panels, obviously a lower end system. We listened to a variety of music and I was completely surprised by how much the sound changed. We literally only applied roughly a square foot to each door but for some reason, the music sounded MUCH warmer and more full. Mid-bass was much stronger and the speakers didn’t sound nearly as bright. I knocked the outside of the door, only to hear a dense “thud” instead of the usual clanky tatter. Now we turned the engine on and after the initial rev, the noise went almost silent. I was just about floored by now. There was NO exhaust drone coming from the rear of the car, and the only time you could even hear the engine was while revving and it was mostly the normal engine sound, NOT much exhaust sound. It basically sounded like a new car with a subtle exhaust. We took it around the block, where there is a lot of construction, meaning crappy roads. The suspension creaking was inaudible from inside the car and the road noise much more suppressed as well. This deadener helped substantially! A subwoofer stage is now actually an option, since before, the exhaust would have cancelled out a lot of bass.

Here are a few crappy pics of the install. I can update the thread as time goes on to make sure it is sticking well through the winter!

Notice NO factory deadener
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/DSCN1703.jpg
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/DSCN1699.jpg
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/DSCN1701.jpg
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/DSCN1702.jpg
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/DSCN1703.jpg

Wheel well covered. After this, I extended more mat to the rear corners.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/DSCN1705.jpg
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/DSCN1706.jpg

Last thoughts:
We definitely need more deadener in the near future. I might end up buying another bulk pack to finish the floor, side panels, and doors. That should make the car just about perfect!

Thus far, the car is SOOOO much better. This Mat not only killed almost all of the drone/noise, but it also looks good! No highly reflective aluminum to destroy our eyes during the day, since there is no carpet in the car!

Just noticed that those pics turned out like crap. I'll go get some more during the day.

Looks great!

Its amazing the difference in older imports on how much quieter it can get !

I'm sorry, can you put all this information in a graph showing thickness so we can see what is really important like jaguar did?


Seriously though, good to hear. Ready to get mine in. Based on all the reviews so far I will probably buy more to finish off the rest of my car.

That is what the plan is for us as well. We're on a crap budget but hopefully we can get some more in there to see how much more sound it kills. We were amazed at how well this actually worked with the little bit of area that we covered. I believe that all old imports can benefit from this stuff tremendously.

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but any updates on the Civic? I have a 93 hatch and I'm planning on redoing my stereo and I'm looking for ideas.