817 Horse Power - Factory Five Cobra - Second Skin project car

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

This is how my monday off went.

My day started off by driving from Anthem Az (20 minutes north of Phoenix) to Chino Valley, (20 minutes north of Prescott AZ)

Took me about 90 minutes to get there:

Me Driving

Once I arrived I met the owner of the shop. Turns out we were at McCabe Racing. Formerly of Laveen AZ.

This is the first thing I see when I pull up:

Next my attention turns towards the Corvette up on the lift:

Click to read more...

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

And this is Gary’s Cobra.

It has a 358 NASCAR engine pushing 817 HP.

I'll try to get more details for you guys soon.

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

The reason I drove up to Chino Valley was to insulate the Roadster for Gary.

By the end of the day we finished about 80% of the labor.

Here is what I brought with me to kill the noise and heat in this beast:

For sound deadening and thermal insulation I brought the follow amounts of each product:

Damplifier Pro Bulk Pack - 36 sq feet

Damplifier - 50 sq feet

Spectrum - 5 Liters (1.25 gallons)

Luxury Liner - 36 sq feet (no time to install it so the upholstery guy is going to put it in)

Heat Wave - 18 sq feet (upholstery guy is going to put this in as well)

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

We were able to treat the entire interior with Damplifier and Damplifier Pro. We did a double layer throughout the entire cabin.

I left McCabe about 40 sq feet of Damplifier to finish the trunk with before he sends it off to the upholstery guy where the Luxury Liner and Heat Wave will get installed.

The one thing that took up a good part of our day was something I had not planned on doing until we got there.

The wheel wells.

After looking at the underside of the car, I noticed that Factory Five does not provide any type of barrier to protect the paint job on top of the wheel wells from the star patterns that sometimes happen when rocks shoot off of the tires and hit the fenders.

Gary and I talked about it and agreed that we take every step necessary to protect his paint, so we jumped right in to it.

I decided to use a combination of two products to protect his paint:

Damplifier Pro - our self adhesive vibration damper

Spectrum - Our water based vibration undercoating.

Since spectrum is water-based it is not going to adhere to fiberglass or plastic very well. Water-based coatings work very well with painted, raw or primed metal, but when it comes to fiberglass they do not adhere as well. They will stick, but not nearly as long as if they are applied to metal.

It is for this reason that I used Damplifier Pro first. Not only will the Damplifier Pro give us a nice solid vibration damping treatment, but it also has the thickness foil in the industry. 6 mils thick compared to 4 mils of our closest competitor. That allow for great protection from the rocks, and better vibration control in general.

Since Damplifier Pro has a foil heat shield, the Spectrum will adhere to it much better than it will to Fiberglass. This gives us just one more layer of protection against rocks and help make it look real nice too.

When it dries, Spectrum is black, and looks similar to a bed liner, but unlike bed liners, Spectrum is elastomeric, which is how it dampens vibrations so well. We also use a wax additive and a cryogenically manipulated polymer when making the Spectrum so it is perfect for use as an undercoating to prevent rust and corrosion or an interior coating to absorb noise and vibrations.

Awesome stuff!

Here is a shot the underside of the wheel well with nothing on it at all:

And a shot with Damplifier Pro getting applied:

Here is a full layer of Damplifier Pro in the wheel well:

 

[GabeC 10+ year member]

sick

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

We did this to all 4 wheel wells. In total we use up about 3 or 4 sq feet each.

Next was the Spectrum.

First, we had to protect the car from the coating. For this we use the few garbage bags around the brakes, and a roll of sell adhesive carpet plastic.

This stuff is awesome for masking off areas of the car you want to protect from overspray.

Once we masked everything off, it was time to spray the Spectrum vibration coating in the wheel wells on top of the Damplifier Pro:

This is a shot of Spectrum after a single coat.

Spectrum is a very thick vibration paint and is set to a specific viscosity, so that it can be applied at 20 mils (20/1000th inch) in each coat.

Apply it any thicker than 20 mils (1/2 mm) and it will either start to run or drip.

So after we did a nice solid layer on each wheel well, we would simply move on to the next one. By the time we finished our first coat on the 4th wheel well, the first one had already begun to skin over.

This means we can add a second layer. The product starts out dark blue, almost grey in color, but once it dries it becomes black.

It will start to darken after about 20 - 30 minutes depending on the temperature which is when additional layers can get applied.

Many people will use Spectrum as an interior coating and exterior coating. If we were going to do this, the roadster would need about 5 gallons:

2 as and undercoating

2 in the cockpit

1 in the trunk

We only used Spectrum in the wheel wells however and ended up applying just a little more than 1 Liter (1/4 gallon) per wheel well.

Another shot of a wheel well coated:

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

We took a break for a little while, so to keep spectrum from drying in side the gun, I detached it from the line and threw it in a bucket of water:

This is a shot of Spectrum as it was starting to skin over. Notice it has already turned black?

This one still needed another 15 minutes to dry.

In 24 hours, the Spectrum will be pretty firm to the touch.

In 72 hours it will be 80% cured.

It takes 0 full days to cure, at which point you will notice 100% of the sound deadening results.

Next project was the interior **** pit. For this we used Damplifier and Damplifier Pro.

Damplifier Pro has a much thicker foil than regular Damplifier, so I used that up front in the foot boxes where heat is going to be a big issue.

The first step was to vacuum out the interior. Gary had a handle on that:

 

[Banana Balls 5,000+ posts]

This thread is full of ***. The Cobra is my dream car.

 

[tc3k101 5,000+ posts]

oh shit

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

Here are a few shots of the cockpit before the vibration mat was applied:

And a few shot after:

 

[Anthony Collova 10+ year member]

We used 2 layers throughout the entire cockpit. Some spots have 3 layers.

Even though this is a convertible, this is going to be one solid sounding machine.

We can't do much about the wind noise, but the tire noise, engine heat and vibration control are all taken care of.

What is nice about sound deadening, is that the mind interprets it a few ways. The less squeaks, rattles and resonance we hear, the more our mind converts that lack of noise, in to a perception of strength. To the driver, the car will actually feel more solid, and will almost seem to hug the ground better.

It is really awesome how the mind perceived the differences, and a more stable and firm ride is just one of them.

Thanks so much to Gary for letting me work on his awesome car, and to McCabe for allowing me to make a mess of his shop for a while!

Also, thanks to you guys for reading this entire thread.

And for your viewing pleasure: a little video action





ANT

http://www.secondskinaudio.com

 

[bones22 5,000+ posts]

that shop does some awsome fab work

the deadener install isnt to shabby itself

 

[Innovative:Cory 10+ year member]

My only question is why in the hell is he using a Fram Filter on that car? WTF???

Your work looks good...

That car is ***!!