Interior Makeover : Sound Dampening, carpet & dash swap. "While you're in there?"

[r4esh]

I'm doing an interior makeover on my 90' m3. After lots of reading I figured I'd pose some of the same questions asked before with a bit of insight. I only want to do this once..

1. Sound deadening : I've read MANY conflicting opinions and results of "sound deadening" the interior. Ultimately the conclusion I've gathered is that for the weight, effort, time, expense, etc the results are mostly minimal and perhaps not worth it. Further, the most effective areas to give attention are the door panels & trunk.
Helpful Findings : Link 1 , Link 2 , Link 3

Can someone chime in on this and their experience?
... a. Is it worth it to ONLY do the doors & Trunk?
... a. What combination proves most effective for these areas?


2. Swapping my carpet:
... a. Should I sound deaden?
... b. Anything I should do specifically while the carpet out?

3. Swapping my dash (Dash Swap DIY , And Another DIY):
... a. Will address the air vent seals as recommended + general cleanup. Anything else?
... b. My air stopped working this summer, will check / test my blower motor.
... c. Expansion Valve? Thoughts? Link to DIY


Just hoping someone can chime in & enforce or argue my findings.

EDIT - Scroll down to see my results / experience and swap!

[r4esh]

Anyone? Input?


Sent from iPhone using Tapatalk

[bradnic]

definitely swap your expansion valve when you do an A/C conversion. did mine last year and it worked great. kept stock condenser. gluchluch and jeffnhiscars have detailed writeups..

can't speak to the sound deadening topic. If you want quiet then keep the stock deadening material but add more to the doors. dynamat's really expensive. there are alternatives. check blunt's 2002 build thread on another forum. you can search "blunt 2002" here and find a link. he just sold his car recently.

[jeffnhiscars]

The link to my AC swap is near the end of my thread (see sig).

As for sound deadening keep in mind that deadening is not sound proofing as you simply cannot "keep sound out" in a car...ok in a Bentley perhaps. The goal is to reduce harmonic vibration which takes place primarily in large unreinforced panels such as doors and roof. The sweet spot is not to cover every square inch since harmonics dont work that way. My Cabrio already had a factory piece of asphalt in the door center (so BMW gets this) and for good measure I added some aluminum backed butyl I had left from when I did a full blown job on my 08 Taco. Butyl is far better and more durable than asphalt which is what I believe our cars come with. It varies by model and I know nothing about how the M3 was built.

Bottom line is, the floor probably has a bunch of material already and being extremely rigid so IMO is not worth the cost or effort. Doors can be improved as can the roof panel, behind the back seat and trunk lid. Having said that lots of guys remove it to reduce weight and the butyl stuff is heavy so Id use it sparingly and wisely.

I bought my mat from this guy and his website has some good insight in to the science of deadening.

http://www.raamaudio.com/

You can also buy butyl roof flashing in rolls from Home Depot which, as far as I can tell, is the same material at a fraction of the cost.

[fronton]

What is your goal with sound deadening? Are you trying to lessen engine noise or road noise? My swap resulted in excessive engine noise coming through the footwell/firewall area. I removed the crusty stock deadening and replaced it with two layers of second skin damplifier in most places and three layers in the passenger side above the headers. This made a significant improvement and was well worth the hassle.

As stated, noise is vibration, so the trick is to absorb vibration and lower frequency. This can be achieved with surprisingly little deadening added in strategic locations, primarily sheet metal with widely spaced contact points.

This is what I bought which was enough to thorough cover the driver and passenger footwells. I could have spread it much thinner and used some for the trunk but wanted to go nuts on engine bay noise and just kept layering, despite it being a diminishing return. http://store.secondskinaudio.com/dam...et-trunk-pack/

[r4esh]

Get read for a long post... Figured I'd post back on my results / what I ended up doing on my small budget and my ultimate experience :

I spent $150 on sound deadening material from Raam Audio... I didn't go crazy and didn't have the budget to do so at the time, so I wanted to see how far I could make it last and take advantage of the fact I was pulling the dash & carpet of my car. $150 got me : 3 sheets of BXT II RAAMmat, 11x23" peal and stick tiles and 6 yrds of the Ensolite IUO Peel and Stick. I knew this wouldn't be enough and certainly not enough to do the entire car / trunk, etc. My objective was focus on underneath the dash / carpet and whatever was left put towards doors & rear fender wells since those are effective areas.

I will start by saying even though I "cut corners" on my materials this was still a HUGE undertaking and the process of cutting and applying the sound deadening took much longer than expected.

I Definitely wish I had doubled the amount of BXT II sheets. Those are the tiles that actually do most of the vibration absorption and I didn't realize how little I purchased.

So using "what I had" sparingly I tried to be strategic with my placement by listening to the "pingiest" spots in the metal and placing some BXT and then re-listening. I had pretty decent amount of the Ensolite IUO and was able to cover a LOT of surface.

Here are some pictures of the process and the coverage (you can see how little BXT I used - I really wish I had purchased more) :

Dash Removed :


Laying what little BXT I had to work with :


Masking inside door panel (note there is some BXT underneath all that as well) :


And a nicely cut layer ontop of that (I had more than enough Ensolite, so why not) :


Progress of thoroughly covering complete area with Ensolite on top of the BXT :


Rear fender well covered (there is also some BXT underneath the Ensolite here) :


The car looks great now with the new / clean carpet and fresh crackles dash. I’m didn’t realize I didn’t take “final result” photos, so I’ll post those this weekend.

Results :
My intention was to help a little bit with my ride comfort. With my budget I wasn’t expecting a HUGE difference. I’m very skeptical and trying to be very cognizant of the “placebo effect” of things like this. Ultimately I do notice / hear a difference, but it is not huge. I think the doors / rear fender wells probably had to most noticeable difference. And the doors do “thud” closed now. I intend on going back and doing behind the rear seats. The engine noise I was hoping to decrease a bit is still there however I do feel like it helped reduce some tranny noise. It was a LOT of work and I encourage anyone trying this to make sure you have enough of the mass loaded tiles (in my case BXT). In the end I’m really happy that I did it. It did make a difference, but if you’re expecting a huge change, then you’ll need a bit more mass loaded tiles than I ended up with.

Overal Project Notes :

• I should have at least doubled the amount of BXT 3 of the 11x23" tiles was no wear near enough. At least double would have made a big difference.
• The BXT will leave you with little cuts all over your hands if you don’t use gloves.
• Dash : Swapping Dash was fairly painless / surprisingly straightforward (I didn’t label anything… I recommend you do).
• Carpet : I had to cut the old carpet up to get it out and getting the replacement carpet in was a pain in the arse. It took a bit of wrestling. Specifically getting it on / around the gas pedal was a pain.
• I didn’t anticipate how much time this would take. Dash & Carpet weren’t ‘too bad’, but the sound deadening process took a long time.
• If you want to make a huge impact / gain huge results you’ll need a LOT more mass loaded tiles… a lot more.
• New weather seal around the air vents in the dash made a huge difference in airflow.
• Fresh carpet & Dash = most certainly worth it.

[TrentW]

Preparing to order from Raam and just curious about the doors. Can't tell by the photo, did you use BXT and Ensolite on the outer door skin and rear panels? Considering ordering 3x as much BXT, since I'm doing behind the rear seat.

[dubdub]

I put over 100lbs of damping material in an es a number of years ago, and I cannot say it was worth it. It made the doors sound a lot more solid when closing. It made the car sound less tinny when you knocked on it, but I cannot say it lowered the sound floor any... it wasn't much quieter in the car.

No matter how much I put on, I couldn't get the car to stop rattling from bass... until I went to a box from German Audio Specialties, which ported into the car instead of the trunk.

My $0.02 from experience. Making the car sound more solid had some value, and people would comment on it, but really it didn't make much difference.

[TrentW]

I put over 100lbs of damping material in an es a number of years ago, and I cannot say it was worth it. It made the doors sound a lot more solid when closing. It made the car sound less tinny when you knocked on it, but I cannot say it lowered the sound floor any... it wasn't much quieter in the car.

No matter how much I put on, I couldn't get the car to stop rattling from bass... until I went to a box from German Audio Specialties, which ported into the car instead of the trunk.

My $0.02 from experience. Making the car sound more solid had some value, and people would comment on it, but really it didn't make much difference.

Over 100 lbs? What did you use-lead? Ha...I kid.

No huge subs here, just good ol BMW Premium Sound.

Purchased package #2 from RaamAudio and will begin installing this weekend. Will post analysis when it's complete.

[AndrewBird]

I've had very good experience with peel & seal from Lowe's. I used it to dampen vibrations in a MKII Jetta I had. Used it on the rear firewall and covered the rear of the door cards with it. It doesn't block sound, but stops panels from vibrating very well. Keep in mind I covered every inch of the panels I used it on, but with it only being like $25 a roll, it is still cheap, just not light weight.

[Stanley Rockafella]

I had an issue with noise in my dd 07 Focus sedan. It was driving me crazy!(pardon the pun).

I was going to try the funny peel and seal stuff and all that jazz, but I wasn't crazy about tearing my interior apart. Instead, a co-worker suggested I try some undercoating spray (the rubberized stuff in a can).

I applied it all over the exposed underside metal parts on my car (there were MANY). I also attacked each wheel well by removing the wheels, cleaning each wheel well, then applying liberal amounts of spray.

For the engine bay (to address engine noise), I got the thicker, "goop" that actually gave instructions on how to apply it to the underside of the hood. I applied almost a whole can to the underside, making sure to avoid any spots that were to help stabilize the hood when it was closed.

Results: I honestly wasn't expecting much from my 4 hours of work and $30 of supplies, but I gotta tell you guys the process has made my dd FAR more comfortable and quieter than I expected. Not only do I not have to wear ear plugs when driving my stock Focus, but it's given me more pride in a car that I was seriously considering selling in the VERY near future for an older Buick/Lexus. At idle you can hardly hear the engine, but obviously (being a Focus) I can still notice the engine idling from vibration. At speeds around 20-50mph I hardly hear the engine, exhaust or tire noise (I have a nice set of Conti DWS's). Even on the highway once the car is in 4th (automatic) and doing around 75 mph, engine noise is non-existant only wind noise with a bit of exhaust sound. Hardly anything I'd consider obtrusive

downside: When I used to mash on the go-pedal, I was treated to a nifty sounding, raspy exhaust note. Now, it seems far more subdued...I'm not sure if I consider that a bad thing of not considering I never intended this car to be my "sports car". That's what I have my e30 for!

Overall: I'd recommend this to ANYONE wanting to quiet their ride. It's cheaper, easier, quicker and probably more effective than tearing your car apart to apply that sticky patch stuff.

if you have any questions, pm me

[phenryiv1]

Frost King makes an inexpensive CCF with foil backing and an adhesive on the front that is a good absorption layer. I have used it in the floor and doors along with mass loading and it is very cost effective. It compares to Ensolite in terms of effect.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Frost-Kin...V516/100028603

[gespinal0301]

Where'd you get the replacement carpet from?