Hi to all.
I am Rasmus, a more or less happy Civic owner from Estonia.
I bought my car a week before christmas and at first I was pretty happy with things. That probably has something to do with the fact that for the week before that I was forced to drive a rental Daewoo (trust me, its hard to come up with a car worse than that).
The car I had before was a Mitsubishi Sigma, which can more or less be counted as an exec car and has all the comforts: powered everything, auto box, silky smooth ride and a quiet, comfortable interior. So it wasn't long since the first and blind love of the Civic was overshadowed by the amount of noise I would have to put up with while driving. I mean it's OK in the city at low speeds, but having to cover longer distances at high speeds - the road noise just does my head in. Also, driving on rougher tarmac or bad roads (there are plenty of them here) made too much noise, mainly because the dampers used on the Civic are skanky but also because the wheelarches don't have much isolation on them.
So I decided to take some steps against that.
1. Went down to the local car audio dealership and bought some materials: a roll of cotton cloth (its not actually cotton), 4 sheets of 4mm bitumen isolation and 4 sheets of 2mm bitumen isolation. They all have one side in adhesive so it's quite easy to use them, no worries with making them stick. The bitumen sheets are 50cm by 50cm and all add up to about 15kg.
Since the weather here is even worse than it is in England I obviously had to do this inside. The installation instructions for the bitumen mats states that the temperature must be at least 15C for the thinner one and preferably higher for the thicker one, so an industrial blower will be needed unless you do the work in spain.
2. For starters I decided to work the doors. Mainly because I know the panels will come off nice and secondly because that's where the speakers are. And soundproof doors make a hell of a difference in the sound quality. The doorpanels come off after unscrewing three screws and pulling to make the poppers pop. Again, temperature works in your favour with the poppers, if its cold then they have the tendancy to break. Its OK though, they are not too difficult to find and cost little too - just as long as you don't go to find them at your local Honda dealer (where everything apart from the cars tends to be a ripoff). Afer that you will have to unplug the wires for power windows and unhook the cables for doorlocks and the panel is free. Unscrew and remove the speaker, as this area will definately need isolation and the hole is good access to the outer inside of the door.
And here is what is revealed:
This is all that Honda bothered to install as soundproofing:
And this is the inside of the door panel. Not very impressive, is it?
After that you will need to peel the plastic isolation. Be careful here, this tends to get messy as the black glue used to keep this tight makes a mess. You won't need to peel the whole thing off, just make enough space so you can put both of your hands through the door.
3. Clean the inside of the door from any water or dirt. The metal will need to be fairly clean to make sure the isolation sticks and hangs on. Brake cleaner does the job quite well, but be careful, as the sides of the door are sharpish and you can slice your veins pretty easily.
4. Cut out appropriate pieces of bitumen and try them out before heating them up and removing the adhesive. I mainly used 2mm bitumen as it is lighter, but right under the speaker and in the lower part of the door I used both 4mm and 2mm bitumen to ensure better sound quality and minimize vibrations. You can, ofcourse, use 4mm throughout but you don't want to make the doors too heavy - it will wear out the hinges eventually meaning the doors will be harder to close. Also, according to specialists there isn't really a need to cover 100% of the door, they say that 70% of the soundproofing is done by covering 40% of the surface. Heating them up with the blower means the glue is in a better state and you can also mold the bitumen according to the surface - which is neccesary in order to make it stick.
The results were something like that:
Here is that same speakerhole afterwards:
5. Use the cotton cloth or some other soft isolation materials to cover the plastic areas on the inside of the door panel. This will stop higher frequency noises and minimize squeaks that occur when plastic scratches against metal. Keep in mind you don't want to cover up any popper or screw holes. So the inside of the door panel should look like this:
6. Close the plastic covering, reinstall the speaker, attach the cables, plug in the wires and place the door panel back on. Make sure everything is in place, push the poppers back in and tighten the screws.
I haven't had the means to measure how much the soundproofing changed in decibels, but the doors definately make a nicer sound when closed (there isnt any metallic noise any more) and surprisingly the car feels a lot firmer, smoother and quieter on bad roads. Bumps and potholes don't make as much noise, but mostly - the quality sound is improved greatly. It just sounds cleaner, more powerful and nicer in every way.
The road noise isn't completely solved though - the front and rear wheelarches need same work. I will get to that sometime soon hopefully. Pics and story to follow.
I am Rasmus, a more or less happy Civic owner from Estonia.
I bought my car a week before christmas and at first I was pretty happy with things. That probably has something to do with the fact that for the week before that I was forced to drive a rental Daewoo (trust me, its hard to come up with a car worse than that).
The car I had before was a Mitsubishi Sigma, which can more or less be counted as an exec car and has all the comforts: powered everything, auto box, silky smooth ride and a quiet, comfortable interior. So it wasn't long since the first and blind love of the Civic was overshadowed by the amount of noise I would have to put up with while driving. I mean it's OK in the city at low speeds, but having to cover longer distances at high speeds - the road noise just does my head in. Also, driving on rougher tarmac or bad roads (there are plenty of them here) made too much noise, mainly because the dampers used on the Civic are skanky but also because the wheelarches don't have much isolation on them.
So I decided to take some steps against that.
1. Went down to the local car audio dealership and bought some materials: a roll of cotton cloth (its not actually cotton), 4 sheets of 4mm bitumen isolation and 4 sheets of 2mm bitumen isolation. They all have one side in adhesive so it's quite easy to use them, no worries with making them stick. The bitumen sheets are 50cm by 50cm and all add up to about 15kg.
Since the weather here is even worse than it is in England I obviously had to do this inside. The installation instructions for the bitumen mats states that the temperature must be at least 15C for the thinner one and preferably higher for the thicker one, so an industrial blower will be needed unless you do the work in spain.
2. For starters I decided to work the doors. Mainly because I know the panels will come off nice and secondly because that's where the speakers are. And soundproof doors make a hell of a difference in the sound quality. The doorpanels come off after unscrewing three screws and pulling to make the poppers pop. Again, temperature works in your favour with the poppers, if its cold then they have the tendancy to break. Its OK though, they are not too difficult to find and cost little too - just as long as you don't go to find them at your local Honda dealer (where everything apart from the cars tends to be a ripoff). Afer that you will have to unplug the wires for power windows and unhook the cables for doorlocks and the panel is free. Unscrew and remove the speaker, as this area will definately need isolation and the hole is good access to the outer inside of the door.
And here is what is revealed:
This is all that Honda bothered to install as soundproofing:
And this is the inside of the door panel. Not very impressive, is it?
After that you will need to peel the plastic isolation. Be careful here, this tends to get messy as the black glue used to keep this tight makes a mess. You won't need to peel the whole thing off, just make enough space so you can put both of your hands through the door.
3. Clean the inside of the door from any water or dirt. The metal will need to be fairly clean to make sure the isolation sticks and hangs on. Brake cleaner does the job quite well, but be careful, as the sides of the door are sharpish and you can slice your veins pretty easily.
4. Cut out appropriate pieces of bitumen and try them out before heating them up and removing the adhesive. I mainly used 2mm bitumen as it is lighter, but right under the speaker and in the lower part of the door I used both 4mm and 2mm bitumen to ensure better sound quality and minimize vibrations. You can, ofcourse, use 4mm throughout but you don't want to make the doors too heavy - it will wear out the hinges eventually meaning the doors will be harder to close. Also, according to specialists there isn't really a need to cover 100% of the door, they say that 70% of the soundproofing is done by covering 40% of the surface. Heating them up with the blower means the glue is in a better state and you can also mold the bitumen according to the surface - which is neccesary in order to make it stick.
The results were something like that:
Here is that same speakerhole afterwards:
5. Use the cotton cloth or some other soft isolation materials to cover the plastic areas on the inside of the door panel. This will stop higher frequency noises and minimize squeaks that occur when plastic scratches against metal. Keep in mind you don't want to cover up any popper or screw holes. So the inside of the door panel should look like this:
6. Close the plastic covering, reinstall the speaker, attach the cables, plug in the wires and place the door panel back on. Make sure everything is in place, push the poppers back in and tighten the screws.
I haven't had the means to measure how much the soundproofing changed in decibels, but the doors definately make a nicer sound when closed (there isnt any metallic noise any more) and surprisingly the car feels a lot firmer, smoother and quieter on bad roads. Bumps and potholes don't make as much noise, but mostly - the quality sound is improved greatly. It just sounds cleaner, more powerful and nicer in every way.
The road noise isn't completely solved though - the front and rear wheelarches need same work. I will get to that sometime soon hopefully. Pics and story to follow.