How To Greatly Reduce Road/Exhaust Noise

[jackiert]

First, let me thank Jimmy (BOSChargerRT) for pushing me to do this. Although I have to admit I wanted to kill him a few times during the project . Anyway for $120 I bought 100' of Fatmat (dyanamat) material, pulled out all the seats, removed all the door panels, pulled all the carpet, and layed Fatmat throughout the vehicle. I covered the entire floor, trunk, doors, rear wheel wells, and center console. Put it all back together and prayed that it would all be worth the blood, sweat, and tears that I experienced over the previous 8 to 10 hours. You don't necessarily have to remove the rear seat backs. You can work under those. Treat the front seats carefully. If you drop the front seats, or if someone sits on them when they're out of the car, you may have to go to the dealer to get them re-calibrated (seat belt tensioner issue). Apparently, the airbag light will also come on. I didn't have any problems with this though.

A couple observations: 1) each door had a small rectangle (4"x8") piece of a cheaper quality Fatmat placed right in the middle of the door. I guess Dodge that some was better than none. 2) 100' of Fatmat weighs about 30 pounds. For me, adding 30 pounds is no biggie, if it does what it should. 3) When closing the doors after the install, they sound more solid. Not as solid as my wife's Lexus, but much better.

Conclusion: I got in the car the next morning to go to work and crossed my fingers. I don't know if I was more happy or more relieved that it made a great improvement. It significantly reduced normal road noise and quieted the exhaust sound inside the car by a very noticeable amount. Don't get me wrong, I love my exhaust. I had the Gibson shortys, high flow cats, and Corsa cat back on my RT. I liked it so much that when I bought my SRT, I bought the same setup a second time, with the exception of the Gibson (I'm using the stock SRT header). At WOT, the exhaust is still angry as hell, but at cruising it's much quieter and the Corsa is a "quiet" cruising exhuast to begin with. And, of course, the stereo sounds so much better due to the "insulation" of the Fatmat.

Every car has a few tricks to get the interior apart and this car was no exception. Here are a couple links that helped me:
1) seat removal http://lxforums.com/board/showthread.php?t=114979
2) door panel removal http://lxforums.com/board/showthread.php?t=22815
3) I bought the Fatmat on eBay. As I stated earlier, it was $120 shipped for 100' which was enough to do the entire vehicle.
I only took a couple of pics, but here they are:

[Rottyfan]

Nice job. How much Fatmat were you able to put in the front doors and how big was the opening?

[jackiert]

Nice job. How much Fatmat were you able to put in the front doors and how big was the opening?

I was able to line the entire door shell. The opening is big enough to reach most arms through up to the elbow. I used fairly large pieces by lightly folding them in half, sliding them through the opening, then carefully opening them up and straightening them out. Once they're inside the door panel, I started peeling the backing off of the furthest point away from my reach. Once I got it stuck to the door where I wanted it, I would peel toward me and flatten it out.

[Maistro69]

I managed to cover my entire out side door panel by cutting smaller pieces and putting my arm in the door. When you tap on the door from the outside it sounds thick and dead which is probably what his Lexus sounds more like. I also put a few pieces on the inner door panel especially around the speaker area. I know it's a lot of work but putting it in the doors made a big difference. Good job on the install and sorry for the threadjack :-)

edit: looks like we had the same install ideas. lol Did you do the rear doors as well?

[jackiert]

edit: looks like we had the same install ideas. lol Did you do the rear doors as well?

I did do the rear doors, too. It definitely "deadened" the sound. I think that was the intention of that small factory installed piece in each door - just to keep something from rattling around I guess.