'95 Del Sol sound deadening project!

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Ok, I worked all yesterday and did not get nearly as far as I wanted... I guess that always happens with these types of things.

Anyway, I will let the pics tell the rest of the story.

Here are the speaker covers I mentioned earlier. They seem pretty thick, which worries me. Who knows, I am probably worried over nothing lol

Got the doors done! This was big for me. I did the doors pretty much first because I knew that if I left them for last, I would just end up not doing them haha

Next up for me were the B-pillars. It seems that these have the potential to block a lot of noise coming from the rear tire wheel wells, so I was sure to try and make these nice and tight fitting.

Since there is a lot of mirror images in the car, I found a good way to use one side as a template for the other. Take said template.

Draw on said template with indelible marker of some kind

Lay template over new piece and press. You can now see the outline of your new piece!

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Moving onto the rear deck of the cabin. This seems kinda daunting, but I am going to give it my best shot anyway.

Here is the passenger side lower trim piece. Unfortunately it needs some trimming to allow for "easy" use of the MLV.

Trimmed!

Driver side lower trim piece.

Trim piece trimmed again.

I picked up the 1/4 inch MLV yesterday, and man, this stuff is heavy. Makes sense though, it is twice as thick. However, I have a hunch that its not twice as heavy... my 1/8th inch stuff is 1lb per square foot, but I bet this stuff is closer to 1.75 or maybe even 1.5 lbs per square foot. I might actually weigh some a little later just out of curiosity.

When I got it and unrolled it, I was a little worried that I would not be able to use it. It had all this crap all over it, that turns out to be some kind of adhesive. When I tried to test my vinyl cement, it would not stick. ****. Eventually, I found that I could peel the stuff off. So much for being an adhesive. Many hours later I went from this:

Doing this:

To this big pile of goo:

This took forever to get off... Actually it took about 2 hours to peel it all off from the pieces I cut, and to me that felt like forever. The stuff was really thin, and was easily torn, so I had to peel it off super slow.

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Ok, here is something that really supports the idea that only 25% of sheet metal needs to be covered.

Here I am pointing to a piece of sheet metal that always annoyed me. When a large drop of water, or even just rain in general hit this, it would resonate like crazy! Drove me nuts.

Anyway, I managed to get a small piece of CLD in there and thats all it needed. The whole piece was dead from just that one piece! Blew me away lol

Also, these are making this whole project possible for me! I have two of them going full blast all day just to keep my garage from freezing my butt off.

Anyway, today I will continue to work on the rear deck, and hopefully get that all done and taken care of!

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Got the floor boards done with the 1/4 stuff.

Had to do a lot more trimming on the rear panels than I would have liked. O well.

Broke a few of my dremel cutting disks lol

Working on the rear deck. This is pretty tricky because there are a lot of really tight areas between the metal and the trim panels here.

Well, my time it up, and I have not finished the car... ****. I looked at the clock and it showed me 1:30am so I had to stop. I was able to get the rear deck all put back together by taking out one of the cubby holes. I cheated lol.

I threw the panels on, and the drivers seat in and called it good. The only things left to finish are the center console and the foot wells. I will try and get to those this weekend.

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Ok, I finally got it finished up! I took it for a quick test drive and I am a bit disappointed... I can tell its quieter, but not as much as I would have liked. I think I might take out the deadening this weekend and add some more CLD tiles to the doors and floor. Do you guys think that might help??

Tomorrow morning I will probably try and measure the change in how loud the car still is.

 

[subdicted 10+ year member]

Please let me know what ends up helping the most with bringing the noise down...

i have a 93 del sol, and was thinking about doing this.. but i was gunna put hush mat on the inside of the door panels then cell phone on the outter area like you did... and cell matt everywhere else.. But mine has alot of exaust noise too (full 3 inch exhaust, and 4.1 header)... did this help at all with that at least?

 

[wenn_du_weinst 10+ year member]

those speaker grilles make me cringe

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Please let me know what ends up helping the most with bringing the noise down...i have a 93 del sol, and was thinking about doing this.. but i was gunna put hush mat on the inside of the door panels then cell phone on the outter area like you did... and cell matt everywhere else.. But mine has alot of exaust noise too (full 3 inch exhaust, and 4.1 header)... did this help at all with that at least?

Well, this week has been a lot busier than I wanted and I have not gotten around to taking any measurements yet. I will do that tomorrow for sure. I will post on here again afterwards with the results. BTW, I have stock tire size, stock exhaust, stock suspension, etc. My car has always been annoyingly loud when driving, and I was hoping this would really help out. Honestly, it has helped, but my ear-meter tells me that it has not helped out a whole lot... Needless to say, I feel there is still a bit more to do. I feel a lot of the noise that is still in the cabin is coming from the firewall and footwells. I'm not sure how to cure these spots just yet. Looks like I might have a summer project ahead of me pulling the dash out and fitting some more MLV and CCF behind it. Plus that would be a good opportunity to get some CCF between a few squeaky bits in the dash. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

those speaker grilles make me cringe

I know right!! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif I am looking for an alternative to them, but have not come up with anything at the moment.

 

[The_Grimy_One 10+ year member]

Dope thread!

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Man, I just can't catch a break! lol I was going to go measure the sound levels but it has been snowing most of the day. I don't think driving on snow will give an accurate sound measurement. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif To be continued...

 

[krisfnbz 10+ year member]

Just saw the post. Still have my del sol....great job with the install.

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

Back from the dead! I have been SUPER swamped at school, so I have not had time to get any final readings on the sound. However, I will be doing that tonight with hopes of FINALLY getting closure on this thread haha. Will post up the results tonight.

 

[Louisiana_CRX 5,000+ posts]

those are pretty nice looking cars

 

[Bereno 10+ year member]

OK, the results! The new sound readings are in bold. However, it is really important to know that it started raining while taking these tests. I will comment more on that in a bit.

00mph: 47-48 decreased to 44-45 dB at cold idle, so a 3 dB improvement

35mph: 68-70 decreased to 67-68 dB on regular road, so a 1-2 dB improvement

35mph: 65-66 stayed the same at 65-66 dB on new pavement, so no improvement*

40mph: 72-73 decreased to 69-71 dB on regular road, so a 2-3 dB improvement

55mph: 76-79 decreased to 74-76 dB on regular road, so a 2-3 dB improvement

65mph: 71-74 increased to 74-76 dB on new pavement, so 2-3 decline*

65mph: 78-80 decreased to 77-79 dB on rough road, so a 1 dB improvement

Note: all roads were somewhat wet for the first set of measurement, and were very wet for the second set. Just an FYI

*there was considerable levels of water on the road and a steady level of rainfall on the car increasing sound level here. Take it for what its worth.

Overall, there seems to be a consistent 2-3 dB decrease in the overall sound level. Overall, I think this could be really improved upon if there was a reasonable way for me to sound deaden the firewall and front foot wells. Using my passenger as a second opinion, we agreed that the majority of sound was coming from the cracks between the door and the body, and from the front wheel wells/firewall. Unfortunately, fixing this would be super time consuming, and is not necessarily worth the effort to me. Also, the center console, doors, and rear deck are all seemingly silent, so the CLD tiles and MLV are doing a great job there. Overall, it is a bit quieter than it was before. However, I was really hoping for about a 4 dB drop, so I am a little bummed, but I guess thats what I get for not really knowing what to expect in the first place haha. It seems as thought the MLV and the CLD tiles are working really well, but there is still a large seeping of sound into the cabin via pathways that are not easily treated. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[Imtjnotu 5,000+ posts]

I miss my del sol now //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif