Sound deadening & thermal insulation for a factory 5 Roadster

I removed most of the content from this thread so that I would not break the forum rules in regards to advertising.

So 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:



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.

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:






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.

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:

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 vibration coating in the wheel wells on top of the Damping mat:


This is a shot of Spectrum after a single coat.

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 it 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 it 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:

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 the coating 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 30 full days to cure, at which point you will notice 100% of the sound deadening results.
Next project was the interior **** pit.

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




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

And a few shot after:





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.

ANT

great post, a question, what did you use as adhesive/glue for the vibration mat on the interior?? i ordered that stuff from speedway with the foil on both sides. i will be doing the interior of my corvette C2 coupe, what would you recommend??? thanks...

The insulation does make for a very nice solid sounding and feeling ride, here is another product that to me, is much less mess and is basically a one stage process, peel and stick, have it in another car and it works very well.

A useful hit to pass along, is to use alum tape to keep the tar from leaching in between the seems, makes for a real nice install ...

This hotrod has the insulation on the underside and the top of the floor pans.

Attached Thumbnails

 

No adhesive is needed.
Damplifier Pro is a self adhesive vibration damper. The technical name for the stuff is a constraint layer viscoelastic vibration damper.
The foil is the constrining layer and the adhesive is the viscoelastic layer.

The product that has foil on both sides with a viscoelastic layer in between is a contraint layer barrier. Big difference.

This one works by absorbing vibrations in the sheet metal or fiberglass.
The other works by reducing the transmission of airborne sound waves.
2 totally different products even though they are similr in substrates.
Both will do a good job with thermal insulation as a side benifit though.

ANT

The foil tape does help!!
Usually better when the damping mat has an asphalt or a lower rated butyl adhesive layer.
A high quality butyl will not melt, ooze, or run at all, regardless of the temperature it is subjected to.

There are a lot of products out there that are designed as roofing tapes, but get sold by distributors as vibration mats because they look similar.
These sometimes are made out of asphalt and will run or drip around 160 degrees f. - A good way to tell is the product was designed for a roof or a car; roofig product come on rolls from the manufacturer. Damping mats come in sheets. The problem, is that they look very similar to the untrained eye, so many companies get away with selling a crap roofing tape to thier customers, only to have them melt and fall off later.

Butyl products like the ones in my pics above and the ones shown in your attachment are much better with regards to heat resistance.
The higher the heat rating, the more stable the butyl and the better the performance and longevity from the material.
Foil tape is always a good to seal the seems and edges, regardless of butyl quality.
Makes for a nice clean install!

ANT