Saw this little thread and I wanted to chime in a little bit. Dynamat makes a big difference. I can say that for sure from experience. So far I have not been experimenting with other brands of sound insulation. Even a small 1 ft square just around your factory speaker helps. I’m not saying you’ll immediately going to end up with an SQ worthy car, but its a very nice way to improve what you’ve got without actually buying new equipment. Sound improves as you add more dynamat. It really does make a difference where you put it. An average car does not require the “wallpapering method” that I’m applying to my own car. I need everything to be solid as a rock in mine, due to the fact that I plan to compete. A door kit and some smaller pieces is enough for your average grocery getter. There are certain points where you definitely need dynamat and some points where you can put it if its left over. The most important point is right where the speaker is attached. It does not really matter if its on the door(the metal portion) or on the door panel(plastic or other materials). The most important thing is to reduce vibration that the speaker produces so it does not resonate and make noise. You also want to provide a nice flat even surface for your speaker to sit against. You dont want gaps between the speaker basket(thats the metal bit) and the mounting panel, as this causes unwanted air leaks. Here are a few tips on installing dynamat. Aesthetics should be the last thing on your mind when dynamatting. The lettering does not have to look straight and you dont have to apply it all in one shaped piece. I found it a lot easier to cut it in pieces as big as the surface allows. Some pieces in my car are a foot long and 2 feet wide and some are 4 inches by 4 inches. It varies depending on where youre putting it on. When you apply dynamat, you do not necessarily need a heatgun, but it helps. I do not own one, so I just used a hair dryer set to high and just held it close to the dynamat. Dont bother heating up all of the dynamat youve got. Just heat up the piece youre going to apply. Dont try to melt it. Just warm it up so it gets very flexible and apply it. Before you apply dynamat, you want to make sure the surface is clean, dry and dust free. You can use a little rubbing alcohol to clean it, but you dont want anything like paint thinner as it leaves a film residue. Dynamat recomends using a rubber roller. I did not use one in my car. I used a sharpie held sideways to flatten out the dynamat as i put it on. Dont wear gloves when applying dynamat because its quite tacky and you will be wasting valuable material due to the fact that youve got it stuck to 14 pairs of rubber gloves. You also have to be wary of the edges on that foil. They are quite sharp and my hands had multiple cuts on every finger from just 2 hours of working with it. Kind of gives a new meaning to blood sweat and tears when working on your car. When you apply a larger piece or a long stripe on an uneven surface, you want to make sure to follow the relief of the panel and dont “drape” dynamat over dips. This created unwanted air cavities that will ruin the sound integrity. What you want to do it press it into all the crevices and bumps. If its fairly deep, just go ahead and let the dynamat piece tear. Once youve pressed all of the dynamat to the panel cover that ripped portion with another piece with a slight overlap. You basically want the “patch” to be about 1-1.5 inches bigger than the rip youre covering. This will make sure youve got it all insulated well and it shouldnt leak air. As youre working on your door, keep in mind that some of those holes and dips are needed. Some of them have a wire running near it or theyre mounting holes for your door panel. It is a good idea to mark those with some blue painters tape as youre removing the door panel to make sure it will snap back on. One other way to use that tape is to tape around the door panel before removing it. This will show you the edge of the panel on the metal so youll know not to go over that line and have shiny metal pieces showing in random places on your doors. When youre doing this, its a good idea to do the very outer rim and around the mounting points first and test fit the door panel back on. You want to make sure that its not being pushed out by the dynamat and that it will snap back on your door. Other things to keep in mind are moving parts. Make sure you dont dynamat over the mechanism for the glass(if its a crank handle). Also move the glass up and down periodically to make sure you dont end up sticking pieces of dynamat onto your windows. If youve managed to get some on the glass, dont fret. Rip off the dynamat with your hands, use a straight edge razor to remove any big pieces still stuck on the glass. Take a paper towel and put a little paint thinner on it. Kerosine based ones work great. Then rub the paper towel hard in small circles on the black mark on the glass. Once youve removed the dynamat you want to clean that up with a dry paper towel. If small specks remain, use a little more paint thinner with a clean part of a paper towel and do the same thing. When you cut dynamat you can use scissors(make sure not to use the good one as theyll be covered in it and you will ahve to preiodically remove the accumulating pieces off the blades), a straight edge razor or a carpet knife. I put down some cardboard under the dynamat. 2-3 sheets should do it, as youll be slicing through the first one as you cut the dynamat. Once youve got your door done, heat it a little more and press on it with your palms flat, just to make sure. When youre doing the portion around your speaker you want to use a single piece(it is possible on 99% of the doors ive seen). First remove the speaker from the door and unhook its wires. If you dont know much about electrical work, mark the wires with some tape. Take a piece of dynamat out of the box and put it on the door. Use a sharpie to roughly draw the shape of the panel. Cut it out and hold it up to the door and make sure thats the shape you want. Warm it up, peel off the paper and put it right over the hole in the door. Press it on starting from the middle moving out. Once the dynamat is applied use a knife to cut out the speaker hole. You can leave a thin edge to fold over the metal, but you dont have to. Make sure the edge is fimply pressed against the door and reinstall your speaker. You can put the mounting screws right through the dynamat. With the wires hooked up and the speaker firmly bolted down youre ready to proceed. I’m going to include some photos of my own front doors as an example and guide. Most of you will not need to do work that extensive, but I think a visual aid is always a plus.
Here is a photo of my driver side door with no panel
The black stripe on the door skin is factory, but its essentially the same thing as dynamat. Most other cars will not have such an open door structure. For the most part there will be metal on the inside of the door with some large openings. My doors are insulated 2 ways: the outer skin and the inner panel. For most of you insulating the innner metal portion will be plenty. You can also insulate the door skin for added noise and vibration reduction. This is a more complex process on most other cars because you will have one large opening to work though.
I this ^^ photo you can see that Ive started doing some insulation on the door skin. The pieces are fairly large and as you can see the lettering isnt all facing the right way, like I’ve mentioned before.
^^ Here you can see the completed door. Note that the entire door skin is insulated, as well as some of the surruounding metal(such as the piece on the top left). I’ve also put some dynamat on the cross members. I based my decision on wether to put it on or not by knocking against the beams. If i knock against it and it didnt sound solid I added insulation. If you put your ear close to the metal and knock and if you can hear some resnonance then go ahead and put on a piece. Then knock against an adjacent piece of metal to hear the difference. Dont bother knocking on the dynamat itself, it wont make noise. In the next two photos you can see the part of the door with the hinge and the locking mechanism. I took those to illustrate how far the dynamat goes.
As you can see in the above shots the dynamat goes all the way to the metal piece thats at a 90 degree angle to the door skin. I did the same on the top and bottom. I did the same thing with the passenger side door.
When you have a door similar to that, you want to make sure that the wires are still acessable in case it needs repairs. You really dont want to deal with peeling back all that dynamat to get to a wire. Its very messy and takes a long time. I also insulated the door panels on the inside. This was a lot more complex than the door skins. I had to basically make a mosaic out of tiny 1 inch pieces all around the bends and wires and around the speaker mounting point. The larger flat portion has a couple of larger pieces. I made sure to go under all the wires to make sure they can be replaced if needed. Here is a photo of a completed door panel(inside view) from the driver door.
If you look closely you can see a slew of tiny pieces all over the panel. This took me about 1.5-2 hours. 95% of you will never need that much work on your doors for 2 reasons: 1 is that you dont compete and 2 is that it added about 30-40 pounds per door.
I hope you found this write up informative and if you have any other questions let me know and I will answer them here. Thanks for the space.
Holy paragraphs batman!
Great write up though.
please, feel free to break it up into paragraphs as you see fit, Vlad.
wow sweet write up
but srsly how long did that take? :confused
the writing or the work on the doors?
:lol the writing
oh, just under 30 minutes. People from forums I’m on know that once in a while ill do one that many dont bother to even read because its too damn long. Vlad’s been asking for me to make some posts in the audio section. Its no problem for me, i enjoy making those. If you guys have some other ideas or questions, let me know. I can do more write ups. Somebody might need to edit them slightly as my main problems are no paragraphs and run ons. :
If you want some help with dynamatting let me know. I’ve gotta say that Japanese cars are super easy to work on, where as German are not. My eclipse was real easy to take apart and put back together. The audi fights me every time. any smallest thing requires lots of work. How, im not quite sure, but in the end its worth it for me. I used to place 2nd with the lowest grade quarts and hardly any insulation in a tin can of a car. This audi is very well insulated as is and im only making it more solid. i upgraded the speakers to the Q line and im going to run all new wires all over the place just to make sure i can get the cleanest signal. I’m not really concenred with money, well i kind of am, but you know what i mean. if a wire costs me 250 bucks ill just get it and not really think. main thing? no gf to spend money on, so its kind of a plus, i guess :tong :lol i dont have a chick nagging me saying that i dont spend time with her and just tinker with my car. my parents and friends know that its my thing, so nobody really comments all that much anymore. i used to get laughed at for my car, but that came to a screeching halt with a 180 degree of a turnaround in reaction once i brought home trophies. whenever i take on a major project i dont do it to just do something. i try to make it a step above what i had. as youll see once its done, i am not into flashy showy setups. i’m hiding as much as i can with this car. I dont want things to be visible. im a minimalist, so i dont want shiny flashing or glowing things all over the damn place. if i could hide that giant sub i would, but theres no way i can fit that anywhere other than the giant crate of a box ive built for it. i plan to simplify even that once its in the car’s trunk. if u look at the car in general, its minimal. its rather plain looking. the rear only has a trunk emblem, thats all. theres not even one on the front because i dont like redundancy. its basically stealth :ninja the inside is all black with a few things glowing red. the deck thats going in the car is going to glow all red, so it doesnt stand out. the valentine is all black with a red display. im not doing a boost gauge because i’ll be getting a device that uses the factory display to show me boost, oil temp and basically whatever the hell i want. the top portion of my display on the dash shows the same thing as the radio does, thats redundant so its going to actually be usefull once the device is made and shipped to me from germany. i want the car to look simple inside and out and really shine when it comes to SQ. i finally want to start getting 1st place consistently in competitions. so Alex, watch out, if youre in my class. i’m not going to do kick panels yet. im following my original plan to see how far i can take it with just doors. eventually once ive pushed it far enough ill build some kick panels. that should be a nice write up, dont you think so? i’m going to end up writing 5 pages at least on the build process. also, remind me to explain the basics of tuning on here, because im sure ill forget in about 5 minutes after hitting the “post” button.
:lol wow
i actually read that, but my buddy is having trouble putting a deck and his 2 JL Audio W7’s in his 04 RSX typeS …if you know anything about installing audio into an RSX or anything you have to take the entire dash out of to put a deck in let me know :lol bc this thing is a bitch! :wtf
No, i dont think you need to remove the whole dash. Most cars have build in brackets and some have a removable basket that the deck attaches to. can you send me some photos of what it looks like?
One other very useful item is DynaXorb panels. They go behind each speaker or sub. This piece will help against sound waves that will bounce back and forth right behind the speakers distorting your sound. It’s a very simple little piece of insulation. The application couldnt be simpler: you clean the surface, apply superglue and put the door panel. I havent put them in my car as of yet, but I plan to put them behind my speakers in the doors and behind the subwoofer if i deem my enclosure unfit and redesign and build a new one. Here is a link to the product page: http://www.dynamat.com/products_car_audio_dynaxorb.html for additional info. Keep in mind that I will not be able to gauge the degree of change after applying these because the car isnt going to produce quality sound until i am completely done with it. Also keep in mind that the Audi is receiving a lot more attention and materials than my Eclipse, so there will be a large difference due to that and the fact that its a completely different vehicle. Judging by what Ive head from people that have used it, its definitely worth buying the panels. I will be posting photos and updates in the projects section when i make a post about the audio build. In general, I think its a great buy. This helps improve the quality of sound in the car without changing components or doing any major work on the vehicle if you want to keep it as is, but make it sound its best. Look for other tips on how to improve sound in my new post about sound stage.
cliffs:
dynamat works, find rattles, stuff cardboard behind w/e is rattling.
:rofl
cardboard? Nuuuuuuuu, duct tape all the way, man! That or hot glue.