15 sq.ft of deadening - what to do with it?

[SSS 18734 5,000+ posts]

I've never done any sound deadening work, so I bought about 15 sq.ft of RAAMatBXT60 to practice with.

What the best way I can use my 15 sq.ft of deadening? Is a single layer on both doors enough? Or should I use it all on a single door?

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[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

Do the doors first...evenly at first, around the speakers.

 

[Spr0ket 10+ year member]

Single layer the outside skin (the interior part of the door closest to the outside). Single layer the inside skin. Double layer parts close to the speaker and put in some acoustic foam directly behind the speaker. Use some XTC foam baffles to tame the elements. I used about 8sq ft on each door of my car (2nd generation Neon). Also, make sure you read the sticky about proper door sound deadening in the "speakers" section. Fantastic material there. Also, talk with ANT from SecondSkin if you have questions... he's awesome.

 

[SSS 18734 5,000+ posts]

I spent about an hour in the garage and got about 2/3 of one door deadened. How important is it to cover the entire inside skin? There's some parts that are extremely difficult to reach, and some parts with wires clipped onto it which would be a b*tch to remove. Overall, doing the inside of the door is just plain hard on my car. Is it allright to have bare spots here and there?

 

[Spr0ket 10+ year member]

Yes, you can get away with running bare in a few places here and there. You should be more concerned with mass loading the lower half of the inside skin. Double layer that area if you can... that's where most of the road noise is coming from on the doors. Eventually I plan on putting a third layer on the lower half of my doors... but I want to do the floor first.

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

do as much as you can do, whatever you can reach

Each door should get about 20 sq feet

with 15 sq feet I would do a single layer on the inner skin of each door with a double shot behind the speaker and a double layer on the outer skin around the speaker

This should help quite a bit

ANT

 

[SSS 18734 5,000+ posts]

well I finished the passenger side door... about 10 sq.ft. worth of deadening. Single layer on both skins, with a double layer around the speaker. Only thing I havn't done is cover up the big holes inside the door, but I attached a piece of deadening foam to the whole door and then placed the door panel back on, so it should be pretty sealed up.

I can't say I notice any difference whatsoever. There are obviously less rattles, which is good... but the difference in midbass is practically none.

Everyone says sound deadening works wonders, but im not seeing it. What did or did I not do correctly?

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

What you did was about the equivilent to stepping one speaker up from 16 guage wire to 12 guage wire..

Takes a bit more to get great results.

Try using about 20 feet in each doo, doing both doors and the rest of the car.

 

[SSS 18734 5,000+ posts]

ok, well considering im going to have to use the rest of my raammat on a single door, i'll have to order some more deadening... but this isn't a car im going to be keeping more than another year or two, so I don't want to put a ton of money into deadening since it wont really increase its value.

Would it be okay to use another brand of deadening on my driver's side door? 100 sq.ft of FatMat for about $130 shipped seems like a pretty good deal to me. I could add an extra layer of it since its thinner (45 mil as opposed ot 60)

 

[SSS 18734 5,000+ posts]

bump. I have a little less than half my deadening left. Should I Use the rest of it on the door i've already done, or start on the other door so I can have relatively even layers of rammat on both doors before I switch to another deadener?

 

[fuzzai 10+ year member]

start on the other door around the speaker...can't hurt