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July 29, 2002 (note: see EDIT remarks below) Car Audio Dampening Materials - a worthy subject. What are they? Basically rubber/tar like materials that you stick to the interior metal parts of your vehicle to lessen noise transmission and vibrations. The mass-loading of the metal lowers the resonance frequency and thus reduces noise as well as the thickness (insulation value) of the material. Most of you know the famous brands like Dynamat, B-Quiet, etc. The problem will these materials is the initial substantial investment required, never mind the time consuming labour to put them in. I have found a cheaper alternative. It's VERY affordable. This tip was given by another car audio enthusiast on www.f150online.com forums. EDIT: I found that the Owens-Corning material doesn't stick worth a crap. So, unless you're using contact cement on the metal and on the material, don't bother! The product is made by Owens-Corning (Fiberglass Pink people) and it is called "WeatherLock" and comes in 2 flavours. Mat & Grit. What we want is the Mat variety. It is 50mils thick or around 1.4mm and comes with a sticky coating on one side and a peel off backing. It's easiest to cut it into smaller pieces and apply many small pieces rather than trying to stick on a huge slab of the stuff. If you want more sound-deadening then you can always apply it in multiple layers. This stuff is made to go under roof tiles so it will take a lot of heat. The box looks like this:
The material itself looks like this (the white plastic is the backing on the sticky side which pulls off before you stick it down):
Unfortunately it's not available in Canada....DOH. I called the Home Depot in Bellingham, WA, USA and they have 66ft rolls of it in-stock for around $68usd a roll. That's a lot of square feet of material. It also comes in a 33ft roll but many places may not stock both sizes. Figure on being able to do at least 2 or 3 vehicles with one 66ft roll! It's reinforced with some fiberglass strands and seems to be a tar/rubber mix. It gets pretty hot on a rooftop so I'm assuming the stuff won't melt and run away in high heat. The "mafia" customs people charged me GST and PST coming to just under $20cdn and on the total of $74something US$. The buggers don't even take off Washington State tax for their tax calculation!! ...so I paid 2 damn taxes on top of WA State tax..... did you say free-trade?!?? So all-in it's about $130cdn for 198sq.ft of the stuff or $0.66 per sq.ft which is pretty cheap. Simple Product Comparison: Dynamat WeatherLock M B-Quiet Extreme Cost per sq.ft $6.07** $0.66** $2.30** Adhesion 8.6lbs/in 3lbs/in* not specified Thickness 70mils 50mils 45mils **Dynamat Regular- price taken for the larger 39sq.ft package from www.nexxon.com , 1.51 exchange, 14.5% taxes (B.C.). WeatherLock price taken from Home Depot, Bellingham, WA plus 1.51 exchange and 14.5% taxes. B-Quiet Extreme $230.04 for 100sq.ft from B-Quiet website (7% GST included, no shipping). *on plywood, metal adhesion is lousy - don't bother with this material unless you're using contact cement on both the metal and the material! Compared to Dynamat, with WeatherLock M you get about 9.2 sheets for the price of 1 sheet of Dynamat of equivalent sq.ft size. Alternatively, if you made multiple layers, 1000mils of product thickness would cost you 14.3 layers of Dynamat at a cost of $86.71 (for 1 sq.ft area) and you'd need 20 layers of WeatherLock M at a cost of $13.20 (for 1 sq.ft area). You would need 22.2 layers of B-Quiet Extreme at a cost of $51.11 (for 1 sq.ft area). So... WeatherLock M is a hair over 15% the cost of Dynamat at the same material thickness and 26% the cost of B-Quiet Extreme. WeatherLock IS affordable. As far as installation instructions goes, Dynamat recommends room temperature while WeatherLock recommends 5-38 deg. C so WeatherLock seems to have a greater application temperature range. The only caution with WeatherLock is that the peel off backing can be hard to remove if the material is above 38 deg. C and recommend you let it cool in the shade, then the backing will once again remove with ease. No problems there. B-Quiet recommends to apply at or above room temperature. Complete install instructions and pictures will go along with my audio install once it is complete. EDIT: As for the Weatherlock material, I'll be using in on the roof of my new garden workshop/storage shed when I get around to building it in 2003. Links: DynamatŪ is a registered trademark of Dynamic Control of Hamilton, OH. B-Quiet is owned and operated by StereoTypes, Regina, Saskachewan, Canada.
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Copyright
2001-2003 Peter Ferlow