Zeniac

I am a daily driver of MY04 and part of my commute includes a stretch of road that has cold rolled asphalt that was driving me crazy with road noise. I did a lot of reading and took at look at what others have done to try to quiet their cars and came across QuietCar's Quietcoat. It is a liquid sound deadener that is a new hi-technology viscoelastic polymer that the company claimed is much more efficient and effective than Dynamat or other simular products. As a liquid it is also easier to apply. I was sceptical, but also intriged and thought that I could try a portion of the car to get an idea on how well it worked without breaking the bank to do so (1 gallon is $72.90 delivered).

Prior to purchase I E-mailed the company to ask a few questions. The website is quite good and the sales staff responded to my questions via e-mail with 24hrs. I followed up with a phone call where I got a voice mailbox. The rep called me back withing 6 hrs. and answered the rest of my questions.

I just bought 1 gallon to do the trunk of my S2000, put 3 coats on as recommended and used a little over a 1/2 gallon. It has made a dramatic difference. Initially the results were very acceptable, however it continued to improve over about a 10 day period and the difference is simply amazing. In fact, while on a normal surfaced road wind noise has replaced the road noise as the main irritant. I have decided to also coat the doors (to hopefully improve speaker response as well as also quieting the cab from road noise), and if I get the itch, eventually I'm going to pull out the seats and carpet and do the floor boards as well, however, it is a weekend job that I don't have time to do right now.

Weight is always a concern and for those of you that use your car mainly for racing the weight penalty may be too high (It weighs 15lbs. per gallon). I believe that it would take about 1 1/2 gallons to do the trunk, floorboards and doors with 3 coats based on the amount I used in the trunk. For me, the weight penalty is a small price to pay to greatly improve cabin comfort.

I can certainly recommend this product to anyone that is looking at a inexpensive, easy to apply, and effective sound dampener ($59.95 per gallon and $12.95 shipping). I took some pictures with my camera and will try to post them if anyone is interested.

dreamcation

good info thanks

hirev

post any photos you can...is this a job that you have to remove alot of stuff to do(trunk) what i don't like is the noise with top up on freeway and would be interested if that is minimized due to just the trunk job? does it smell for weeks afterwards? how do you apply(brush)?

Zeniac

Of course you have to remove the spare tire, trunk panels and bottom tray, but it is easily done with a door panel tool (about 5 bucks at any auto parts store) and takes about 10 minutes to remove.

The next step is to make sure the surface area to be coated is clean (oil, grease or dust and dirt will affect adhesion). My trunk was clean with only a bit of dust which was easily cleaned of with a damp rag. I also removed the felt barrier that is attached to the convertible top tray.

The Quietcar product can be brushed on, rolled on or sprayed on, as I did not want to invest in any extra equipment for an experiment, I chose to brush the Quietcoat on. The Quietcoat is charcoal in color and has almost no odor to it, even when brushing it on. It is also water based so things can easily be cleaned with a damp rag if you screw up and accidently spill or brush something you didn't want to. I poured a small amount into an empty 1/2 gallon ice cream pail and used a 4" brush to apply the Quietcoat. I covered all exposed surfaces starting at the back and top of the trunk and worked my way forward. I coated the top tray first (I'm not sure how much of a difference this will make, but I figured while I had everything open, what the heck) and avoided covering any screws, bolts, or harnesses. I also left the felt padding that surrounds the fuel pump assembly alone and just brushed the area surrounding it.

Clean up is easy, as earlier mentioned, the product is water based. I left the first coat dry over night and then did the second coat in the morning and third coat in the afternoon of the same day. I let everything dry until evening and then replaced the felt, panels, spare tire and tool tray.

Believe it or not, I am actually finding the car a bit too quiet. Previously I had removed the resonator and had a satisfying exhaust sound coming in to the cabin. However, with the Quietcoat on, I am now considering replacing the stock exhaust with a cat-back system to get some sound back. Top up freeway noise is greatly reduced and wind noise has replaced road noise as my main sound irritant. On cold rolled asphalt the road noise is still there but not nearly as pronounced. I am thinking of maybe putting some of my left over Quietcoat in the rear wheel wells as well as the doors, as the product will work on external areas as well (Being Charcoal in color is great too as it will not be noticable at all as compared to some of the other products that are bright blue and such). I also think that coating the floorboards would also greatly reduce cabin road noise.

One caveat would be weight, the Quietcoat is heavy at 15lbs. per gallon. My goal is to try to keep the weight to around 22 lbs. maximum (Approx 1 1/2 gallons).

One other thing I did was to fill the empty space under the convertible top tray with some carpet matting as I couldn't get back there without a lot of extra work. (Not the normal stuff but the matting with the plastic covering top and bottom). It adds almost no weight (<1lb.) and I believe that it reduces resonance from that area quite a bit (I got a roll end from a commercial jobber for a couple of bucks).

I will try to post pictures later, but it really doesn't show much, just a black coating on the trunk area, spare tire area and covertible top tray.

I hope this answers your questions, overall I am very satisfied with the results and it cost me lass than $75.00 to boot.

Zeniac

Here is what I have for photos.

S TWO K

Great info. These liquids really work, you'd be surprised! The dynamat from the old days is super heavy and better suited to home roofs than our cars...

thetz99

If you jack the rear up, coat the body pan area where the resonator and evap canister are and that will cut the 3-4k rpm drone of any aftermarket exhaust. Lets you enjoy your stereo and your exhaust at the same time.

Zeniac

Would this work better than removing the seats and carpet and coating the inside of the floorpan?

I was thinking of maybe doing this because I felt that I would be able to get better coverage. I was also considering placing a thermal barrier around the transmission cowling as it seems to throw a lot of heat. In the summer in South Texas (hell, any time of the year) this area of the console throws a lot of heat.

Has anyone else tried to do anything about the radiant heat from this area or am I going overboard? (According to my wife, I do tend to at times)

SDosMil

i think I might try this in order to quiet down the whine from the Richmond's 4.57 final drive. Any thoughts?

wanabe

excellent post!
5 years owning the car and i had never thought of this...
i love the sound of my spugen exhaust, but could love it just as much if what i hear is coming from the rear and not through the body!
i like the idea of applying the stuff to underbody-