question on sound deadening

IgleeI

So the road noise is pretty annoying, not necessarily rocks hitting the fender wall, but the road itself so what's a recommended brand?

I've already looked at secondskin but I'm not sure if what I need is the luxury liner or the other pieces...

I'm just trying to soften the ROAD noise in the trunk area because I dont really have any vibration and I enjoy listening to the exhaust and engine noise...

Boosted Josh

I just ordered 25 sf of edead (the 80 mil stuff) from elemental designs and 25 sf of their foam deadner.

I'll try to install it this weekend if it gets here by then.

It is only about 15 lbs of stuff so hopefully it brings the noise down without too much weight.

Caravanshaka

second skin has great stuff. I have a layer of damplifier pro and then luxury liner pro on top of it and it made a huge difference.

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sig11

Same here. It helped a ton... and the FI exhaust still hurts my ears at the right load/rpm range.

autopc25

How long did it take to do the install? Any pics?

Thanks

flashburn

Here's a writeup I did a while back:
DIY: Sound Deadening The Hatch

Caravanshaka

mine looked very similar to his, except the luxury liner was put on correctly I have some pictures, but haven't had the time to compile them all with a review yet (I will, hopefully soon).

I spent about 5 hours doing the damplifier, and then about 2 hours on the luxury liner. Disassembly and Reassembly of the interior panels only takes a few minutes.

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____________________ PROJECT DiaD - Sold but not forgotten!
The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that in order to work the penis, the brain must remain whole.

Modshack

Nice Job Flash! I did something similar on my Vette and it helped a lot...took a 40SQ ft pack to do from the seat bulkhead through to the rear..

Also, get on Second Skin's mailing list. They often have seconds or blems at a 20-30% savings..

http://www.secondskinaudio.com/

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flashburn

Yeah, that kind of sucked! Oh well, I still might try and redo those parts, but honestly I'm kind of happy as it is now.

It took me closer to 8 hours doing the damplifier I think. Well it seemed like it at least. I split it over two days. You are right, taking off and putting on the panels is extremely quick and easy. Although on the first panel I did manage to break off a tab by being too forceful at first. I just superglued it back on and it held enough to put the panel back in the next day, although I'm sure it will break when I remove the panel again.

Boosted Josh

So what was the verdict after the install? Can you tell a difference?

flashburn

I briefly talked about the improvements in the DIY thread, but yes I did see a noticeable improvement. I've always been a strong advocate of sound deadening. In my previous car (RSX) I did the entire car with the two different types of sound deadener, it was a HUGE different that time. This time, I wanted to keep the amount of weight added to a minimum while still getting some deadening results.

Scribe

Supposedly Nissan is adjusting something (adding insulation?) around an air inlet to the cabin to reduce road noise on the 2010s. It's a rumor from Edmunds.com, but it might be worth looking into to replicate on the 2009s.

sig11

Ugh you guys are crazy... or you have the right tools. It was a nightmare getting the panels and weather stripping off and especially back on.

flashburn

I bought one of those panel removal kits from Amazon, I think it was around $10-$15. Came with like 6 different tools to use.

ocfoilist

I installed Hushmat Ultra throughout the car, from the rear end right up to just under the dash. Clean and very thorough install by Beach Audio in Huntington Beach, CA. The whole process took about 7 hours and I watched the entire time. Disassembly is definitely a time-consuming process and I can imagine that it would take a lot longer if this was the first time you were disassembling a car (looking at the guy doing the work, it definitely helps to have 'been there, done that'). The whole process - labor and material - ran about $800. I could definitely have done it cheaper myself, but I decided not to spend the hours it would take me to do something like that, not to mention the inevitable breakage of clips, etc, that would probably ensue from my first attempt at doing something like this.

As for the results, I can definitely say that there is clear improvement, but you aren't going to get a completely quiet cabin. For me, I wanted to reduce the road noise more than the engine and I definitely didn't want to mess with the sound of the exhaust (which I love - thanks Stillen)!

The Hushmat did about what I expected it to: the cabin is definitely quieter, particularly on surface streets. I would say that driving around town, I have an almost silent cabin in terms of road noise. As for freeway driving, cabin noise creeps back in but it depends a great deal on the type of road surface. For all but the grooved cement segments, the cabin is still very quiet, but the will definitely vary depending on what you are driving on.

Obviously, the tires have a big impact on this as well and I will be moving away from the stocks once I burn through them. Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of satisfaction with noise reduction vs. expense, I am a 7: a lot better but certainly not perfect.

There are, of course, other products out there that may have a different impact on noise reduction. I stayed away from foam installation as it can have an effect on how the panels come back together. I would say that your odds of successfully installing some foam are better in the Z than in, say, a BMW since the fit and finish isn't quite as tight in Nissan's products. But after reading up on these various products, the amount of foam that you can fit into most of these panels is very small and I didn't get the feel from many of the customer feedbacks that it made a big difference. As for the dampening ability of Hushmat vs. Dynamat, I feel that you are primarily paying for the Dynamat name and that many of these other products, like Hushmat and SecondSkin, are just as good for less money.

At any rate, I hope this helps others come to an informed decision about dampening. I know there are strong opinions on what material to use, how much of it to use and how effective it all really is, but for me this was a good trade-off between effort, money and return on investment.

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