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Discussion starter · #21 ·
This is all very interesting. Per your last paragragh, our '16 is light years quieter than any vehicle we have owned and we have never noticed wind noise at all. How quiet this car is inside still amazes us. But maybe we are still tuned out from all the other cars we've owned.
Agreed. Our 2016 R/T was the quietest car we had owned as well. We moved from it to a top of the line Jeep Grand Cherokee (Summit Reserve), which had the air suspension, and we were shocked it was more noisy than our 2016 R/T was. We ended up trading the Jeep back in for this 2023 TnG, which is a quieter ride than the Jeep was excepting for the exhaust.

The TnG exhaust is really a totally different animal than the standard R/T is though. Here's a video of my wife casually leaving the house ... just to show how aggressive the TnG exhaust is:


The interior cabin noise from the exhaust wasn't overbearing, but could be a bit much over time. Adding the sound treatments was my way of toning it down a bit for comfort.

I believe the wind noise I'm now hearing is an artifact of something which isn't aligned quite right, and is most noticeable when driving at speed (ie: above 50mph or so). I notice the front two doors don't have the same gap when closed, and I can push on them and have them move a tiny bit when closed. I also notice there is a gap about the size of a credit card thickness between the leading edge of the mirror's black plastic trim and the door's painted body panel.

I think there's just a few things which need a bit of tweaking to silence the wind noise I'm hearing. I'll probably start by adjusting the door strikers to pull them in a bit, and also open the doors up and check the mounting bolts for the side mirrors. If they are tight, I may add some rubber weather strip material to the underside of the black plastic trim to prevent wind from passing between the mirror and the door. Not sure yet though, as I still need to investigate it more.
 
Nice. The product you used has a thin layer of MLV already on it, as it's a 3-in-1 product.

I can't find the heat testing results right now, but here's a screen shot of the overall damping test results:

(pic removed)
Thats very interesting. Especially the difference between the Siless 50mil and Siless 80mil. That's a hefty difference in performance - about a 75% reduction in perceived loudness, and about 40% of the energy transmission if I remember the formula correctly (2^(-3.87/10) for psychoacoustic "loudness").

The heat testing Chris did showed product failure in a lot of the cheaper brands at temps easily reached in a vehicle. When the product fails, it not only stops performing its damping function but also melts and causes a goopy mess behind the panels. Kilmat is one which comes to mind ... I don't remember if Siless was one of those which melted or not, but most of the cheaper product on Amazon are actually made by STP, just branded and sold under different logos.
Thanks for giving me that fear. I haven't seen another product with similar specs of the Siless, so who knows how it will hold up. I will say that the quality of this seemed pretty high, if not higher, than stuff I'd used in the past (FATMAT and Dynamat). I may go with something a little higher end (or at least well known for not failing) for doors, roof, forward of the 2nd row, and firewall.
 
I was wondering why the need for extra sound deadening and then saw/heard the vid. My challenger RT has headers, cam and a 3" catback, and I think it still sounds too quiet in the cabin. If anything I want to remove the sound deadening materials. :D BTW it is not a daily driver.
 
Discussion starter · #26 ·
Thats very interesting. Especially the difference between the Siless 50mil and Siless 80mil. That's a hefty difference in performance - about a 75% reduction in perceived loudness, and about 40% of the energy transmission if I remember the formula correctly (2^(-3.87/10) for psychoacoustic "loudness").
The general rule of thumb is 10dB is equal to double perceived loudness, while 3dB represents double energy.

Note the Siless product he tested was their CLD, not the 3-in-1 hybrid product. CLD is made by attaching a rigid layer to a mastic. Ideally, it's 100% butyl rubber mastic attached to an aluminum backing rigid layer. It doesn't look like the 3-in-1 has a rigid layer in it though, at least according to the diagram. So I don't think it will act as a constraining layer to reduce resonance:

Image


This looks like a sound blocking material to me with no damping properties. I'm basing it on the 50mil mastic for adhesion (it says butyl based which would make me question if it's a blend of butyl rubber and asphalt ... otherwise why wouldn't they say 100% butyl? It also says for vibration damping, but that would require a rigid layer between it and the foam) ... then it has 100 mil layer of foam for decoupling the membrane (they state it's for sound absorption and heat rejection but I would question it's ability to do that. foam attached to a mass loaded membrane is used to decouple it from the vibrating surface) followed by a 50 mil layer of a mass loaded membrane. Mass loaded membrane is typically mass loaded vinyl (or lead) with roughly 1lb per sqft of mass but the more mass the better. Not sure what this one is though.

Note that 50 mil = .05in or 1.27mm. Typical mass loaded vinyl for sound blocking is at least 1/8" thick (3.175mm or 125 Mil) with the better stuff being 3/8in (9.75mm or 383 Mil). I've never seen a mass loaded vinyl product of 1/20" (1.27mm or 50 Mil). There are plenty of 50 Mil CLD products out there though. I guess they were trying to make an all-in-one product with different materials sandwiched together to try and do all things, which makes sense ... it's just not comparable to the CLD Chris tested.

But if it produced the desired result you were after, then awesome! I will say these vehicles don't have much resonance going on aside from the wild TnG exhaust. When we had the 2012 and 2016 year models, I never saw any reason to try and add any CLD to those vehicles.

Thanks for giving me that fear. I haven't seen another product with similar specs of the Siless, so who knows how it will hold up. I will say that the quality of this seemed pretty high, if not higher, than stuff I'd used in the past (FATMAT and Dynamat). I may go with something a little higher end (or at least well known for not failing) for doors, roof, forward of the 2nd row, and firewall.
Oh man, I didn't mean to evoke fear ... apologies for that. I was just explaining my decision process for what I decided to go with. To be fair, I haven't seen any pictures of Siless failing ... and the other products don't always fail either, it's just more likely to fail over something like Second Skin, or Dynamat, or Resonix, etc ... I will say that asphalt based products has a high likely hood of failure in a car environment which is why manufacturers advertise 100% butyl on their products. Asphalt used to be fairly common early in this industry, and it just caused a huge mess in hot cars. Quality manufacturers went to 100 butyl while other manufacturers started mixing it with butyl as a blend instead, to raise the melting point. Butyl rubber is more expensive than asphalt ... Not sure if this is what Siless does though. If they do use asphalt, the more they use in the blend the more you can smell it. So if the product didn't have a smell when you installed it, it probably doesn't have enough asphalt to cause a problem.

I was wondering why the need for extra sound deadening and then saw/heard the vid. My challenger RT has headers, cam and a 3" catback, and I think it still sounds too quiet in the cabin. If anything I want to remove the sound deadening materials. :D BTW it is not a daily driver.
Ahh, gotcha. Yeah, the TnG exhaust is pretty rowdy. It sounds so great outside the vehicle though. My home office is attached to my garage, and it makes me smile whever she starts it up to go out when I'm working!
 
I finally got a chance to go for a longer drive last night, about 40 mins of mixed driving ... some 75+ mph highway and some local stop and go roads.

I am VERY pleased with the results! There's a lot more muting/blocking of noise than I initially realized. Overall road noise is definitely reduced, and the exhaust is just perfect now inside the cabin. There are no fatiguing artifacts anymore.
My experience as well. My commute is short, but bumpy. There's a lot less structureborn noise transmitted into the cabin, and road noise/tire-thump has been greatly reduced in the rear.

I imagine the lack of a spare tire along with lack of any insulation over the cargo area, had the two mufflers resonating the floor panel between them, where the spare tire would normally be. This resonation was most likely traveling forward along the floor, which is why it sounded like the exhaust noise was coming from the floor prior to the treatments. It would come from under the 2nd and 3rd row seats. I initially thought it may have been the suitcase muffler but I now realize it's not, as it's completely gone after doing this work; so it must have been the rear mufflers' sound passing through and vibrating the floor.
I also removed my spare, as it's pointless given my brakes and tire size. After doing that, I noticed a significant increase in cabin volume from the exhaust - There is no longer a 50lb damped mass pulled tight against the floor, after all. Like you, it felt like the exhaust noise was coming THROUGH the floor. That's all but completely gone now, even with my much-louder-than-your exhaust. There was practically no drone with the Corsa at cruise, but hammering on it was loud from inside the car. Now, it's just rowdy behind the car. I can still hear the pops and cracks, and the tone hasn't changed much; it's just much more refined than it once was.

I would definitely do this again, in a heartbeat. If our Durango was totaled tomorrow and we got a new TnG, I would absolutely tear into the new one and repeat my work here. Even if it cost me 20% more in materials.
Same. I'd always wanted to do this to a car, but never had the time or motivation. Now that I've done it, it's moved into "first mod" territory.

One other comment about this .... When I had the interior apart, I also removed the 10" subwoofer speaker from the sealed plastic enclosure and added 6oz of polyfill to it, then reinstalled the speaker. The polyfill, along with the sound treatments, has significantly improved the bass response of the Harman Kardon system. The wife and I both commented on it last night during our drive, as we were jamming some music for part of that drive.
I used the Siless on the exterior of the OE Alpine Sub box, but didn't think about packing the inside. On the Alpine system, you have to run the bass REALLY low or you get a ton of resonant booming and even normal volume levels with Bass at 0 make the 3rd row uncomfortable both in terms of loudness, but also in terms of sound pressure.

What did you use for polyfill? Just pillow stuffing from a craft store? It's so easy to get to, I'll probably do the same thing if I know what material to use (and how much).

When cruising now, I am mainly hearing wind noise around the front door seams and the side mirrors. I didn't notice this as much before, when the exhaust was so intrusive ... but do hear it more prominent now. I will probably dig into it a bit deeper sometime in the future to see if I can improve it any.
The wind noise is interesting - I don't have that over the mirrors or door seals. I do have some from the cowl, but my cowl is 10 years old, and the rubber seal failed long ago. My bootleg "repair" didn't work, so I get a lot of noise from that. I'll probably replace the cowl when I need a new windshield (which is soon).

Have you thought about tufting the mirror and window to see what's happening with airflow there? Could be a simple fix (especially if it's at a certain speed).
 
The general rule of thumb is 10dB is equal to double perceived loudness, while 3dB represents double energy.
That tracks my math then - Log scales being what they are. Good point below that the product was different.

Note the Siless product he tested was their CLD, not the 3-in-1 hybrid product. CLD is made by attaching a rigid layer to a mastic. Ideally, it's 100% butyl rubber mastic attached to an aluminum backing rigid layer. It doesn't look like the 3-in-1 has a rigid layer in it though, at least according to the diagram.
That likely explains why their recommendation is to use one of their butyl products beneath the hybrid...

I wonder what my options would be to improve on this - it's not going to come off, that's for sure. The resonance is definitely decreased, but probably not as much as if I had used a 100mil pure butyl/aluminum substrate. Maybe a thick MLV layer on top will make up the difference?

But if it produced the desired result you were after, then awesome! I will say these vehicles don't have much resonance going on aside from the wild TnG exhaust. When we had the 2012 and 2016 year models, I never saw any reason to try and add any CLD to those vehicles.
It's definitely noticeable, and I am happy, but now I'm wondering if it could have been better had I done more digging. I admit it was a very last minute decision to take on the project and didn't do as much diligence as I would normally have for something like this.

Oh man, I didn't mean to evoke fear ... apologies for that. I was just explaining my decision process for what I decided to go with. To be fair, I haven't seen any pictures of Siless failing ... and the other products don't always fail either, it's just more likely to fail over something like Second Skin, or Dynamat, or Resonix, etc ... I will say that asphalt based products has a high likely hood of failure in a car environment which is why manufacturers advertise 100% butyl on their products. Asphalt used to be fairly common early in this industry, and it just caused a huge mess in hot cars. Quality manufacturers went to 100 butyl while other manufacturers started mixing it with butyl as a blend instead, to raise the melting point. Butyl rubber is more expensive than asphalt ... Not sure if this is what Siless does though. If they do use asphalt, the more they use in the blend the more you can smell it. So if the product didn't have a smell when you installed it, it probably doesn't have enough asphalt to cause a problem.
I remember the days of people using roofing tar sheets for sound deadening. This stuff didn't really smell at all. I have no idea what their "BmastiC" stuff is, but hopefully it holds up. What research I did find shows the use of their BmastiC material in extreme weather pet shelters as a sound deadening agent beneath a layer of PE foam.
 
Discussion starter · #29 · (Edited)
I also removed my spare, as it's pointless given my brakes and tire size. After doing that, I noticed a significant increase in cabin volume from the exhaust - There is no longer a 50lb damped mass pulled tight against the floor, after all. Like you, it felt like the exhaust noise was coming THROUGH the floor. That's all but completely gone now, even with my much-louder-than-your exhaust. There was practically no drone with the Corsa at cruise, but hammering on it was loud from inside the car. Now, it's just rowdy behind the car. I can still hear the pops and cracks, and the tone hasn't changed much; it's just much more refined than it once was.
This makes sense, thanks for confirming my suspicion the lack of a spare tire was contributing to this. Agreed the extra ~50lbs of mass attached to the floor has a huge impact on preventing the panel from resonating, and then also the large chunk of rubber sitting between the two mufflers also breaks up the sound field being generated by them.

If the CLD and MLV didn't work for me, my next move would have been to spray Second Skin's Spectrum on the underside. But I don't think I need to do that anymore.

Same. I'd always wanted to do this to a car, but never had the time or motivation. Now that I've done it, it's moved into "first mod" territory.
Yep, I can relate to that! In my younger years (I'm closing in quickly on 50) I was always about performance and loud! But now, I really enjoy a quiet interior without sacrificing performance or the exterior rumble. After treating my 2005 GTO will the full spread of materials, I was a believer. In that car, I took before and after measurements of ambient road noise.

at 65MPH, HVAC off, 6th gear cruising .... Baseline was:

Image



After I gutted the car and treated everything with CLD, MLV and CCF ... the after measurement (same stretch of road and same conditions) was:

Image


That was a 13dB drop! It made a HUGE difference in the cabin. Of course, the GTO was not anywhere nearly as well insulated as the Durango, but it does show the affects proper sound treatments can have on a vehicle.

What's even more compelling is to look at the frequency spread of the before and after, and see where the drops are happening.

Before:
Image


After:
Image


I mean, the difference was night and day in that car, and it made me a huge believer in treatments.

So when we got the 2023 TnG, I knew I could address the exhaust noise with proper treatment. In hind sight, I wish I had broken out my audio calibration equipment and run the same before and after tests, but I already know it would work so I didn't bother.


I used the Siless on the exterior of the OE Alpine Sub box, but didn't think about packing the inside. On the Alpine system, you have to run the bass REALLY low or you get a ton of resonant booming and even normal volume levels with Bass at 0 make the 3rd row uncomfortable both in terms of loudness, but also in terms of sound pressure.

What did you use for polyfill? Just pillow stuffing from a craft store? It's so easy to get to, I'll probably do the same thing if I know what material to use (and how much).
Hmm ... the bass in the Harman Kardon system was lacking. We had the Alpine in our 2012 Crew, the Beats in our 2016 R/T, and the McIntosh in the Jeep GC-L. So coming to the Harman Kardon, we felt it was lacking bass significantly. Adding the poly fill and the sound treatment materials fixed this though. Polyfill essentially makes the enclosure apear to be a larger air space to the speaker. I'm not sure if it'll help with your issues, but it's only a few dollars and 5 mins to try it out.

I bought the 350g (12.3oz) pack of this stuff and used 1/2 of it. It comes in 2 packages of vacuum sealed pouches, so I basically used one full pouch.


The wind noise is interesting - I don't have that over the mirrors or door seals. I do have some from the cowl, but my cowl is 10 years old, and the rubber seal failed long ago. My bootleg "repair" didn't work, so I get a lot of noise from that. I'll probably replace the cowl when I need a new windshield (which is soon).

Have you thought about tufting the mirror and window to see what's happening with airflow there? Could be a simple fix (especially if it's at a certain speed).
I haven't really done anything about this yet, as it's just now being obvious after silencing the exhaust noises. But my initial plan of attack is:

For the driver's side, I'm hearing wind at the mirror and also at the upper corner ...

Image


At the mirror, there is an air gap between the plastic and the door, where the arrow is pointing. I plan to get into the door and check out the mounting. If it's tight, I'll remove the mirror and add some rubber weather seal to the inside of the plastic housing, so it'll seal against the door without being visible.

At the top corner, the outer seal there looks deformed to me. It looks like it was pinched in the door after assembly and stayed like that during transport. I'm hoping I may be able to use a heat gun and reform it properly ... but we'll see.


On the passenger's side, there's noise in similar locations:

Image


Although with the mirror, the leading edge is tight with no gap but the top is not tight against the body. You can sort of see it in this pic. I'll do the same here, and inspect the mirror mounting. If I can't resolve it with adjusting the mounting then I'll add some weather seal to it as well.

And at the top corner, the front door is not flush with the rear door when it's fully closed. It sticks out roughly 1/8" or so. This is where I think adjusting the door striker may pull it in the rest of the way.
 
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I LOVE what you did with the sound deadener and considering following suit, but am I only person that remembers taking a blow torch and puddy knife to my cars to remove this crap to make lighter and faster? LOL LOL LOL
 
Discussion starter · #32 ·
That likely explains why their recommendation is to use one of their butyl products beneath the hybrid...

I wonder what my options would be to improve on this - it's not going to come off, that's for sure. The resonance is definitely decreased, but probably not as much as if I had used a 100mil pure butyl/aluminum substrate. Maybe a thick MLV layer on top will make up the difference?
It really depends on what you are looking to accomplish. If it's to reduce resonance further, than you really need to add mass or a constraint layer damper material to the metal. To do that would mean either removing what you have, or adding something to the other side of the panels.

But if you're looking to further block exterior noise, then a layer of MLV on top would do it. Or ... a layer of some sort of lead product. Lead sheet sandwiched between two layers of CCF is about as best you can get, but is pricey. The lead sheet is super easy to work with, as you can mold it around tight bends and corners, and doesn't get in the way of reinstalling interior components. Resonix Barrier is a great product in this space, but it's gets super expensive ($31 per sqft!) to cover enough area to make a difference.


I remember the days of people using roofing tar sheets for sound deadening. This stuff didn't really smell at all. I have no idea what their "BmastiC" stuff is, but hopefully it holds up. What research I did find shows the use of their BmastiC material in extreme weather pet shelters as a sound deadening agent beneath a layer of PE foam.
Ha! Yes, the Home Depot/Lowes peel-n-stick roofing stuff ... What a nightmare! If the Siless didn't have a smell to it, then you're probably good to go and I wouldn't worry too much about it melting.

I LOVE what you did with the sound deadener and considering following suit, but am I only person that remembers taking a blow torch and puddy knife to my cars to remove this crap to make lighter and faster? LOL LOL LOL
When I was competing on the Texas road course circuit, people would do all sorts of crazy things to reduce weight ... from scraping off OEM sound deadener like you describe, to stripping the paint and primer off the car and repainting with a lightweight primer. Believe it or not, the primer, paint and clearcoat has significant weight to it.
 
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I LOVE what you did with the sound deadener and considering following suit, but am I only person that remembers taking a blow torch and puddy knife to my cars to remove this crap to make lighter and faster? LOL LOL LOL
Dry ice and a chisel in my day.
 
When I was competing on the Texas road course circuit, people would do all sorts of crazy things to reduce weight ... from scraping off OEM sound deadener like you describe, to stripping the paint and primer off the car and repainting with a lightweight primer. Believe it or not, the primer, paint and clearcoat has significant weight to it.
Two anecdotes - One was good ole Smokey Yunick. He acid dipped the body panels on one of his Camaro race cars to thin-out the sheet metal. He also did a TON of amazing other things!

Second - Back in the 1950's, Cessna offered a variety of paint schemes on the 150 - everything from unpainted (polished) to full paint. The delta in payload was like 30lbs, which in those aircraft could amount to a significant amount of flight time (up to an extra hour under certain conditions!). To this day, the weight of paint makes a difference in effective payload on all aircraft - to the point that part of the repaint process is to re-weigh the aircraft once complete.
 
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Dodge would acid dip their doors and bumpers, install plexi side windows, remove the radio and heater and install van seats all in the effort to reduce weight for their factory race cars.
 
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It really depends on what you are looking to accomplish. If it's to reduce resonance further, than you really need to add mass or a constraint layer damper material to the metal. To do that would mean either removing what you have, or adding something to the other side of the panels.

But if you're looking to further block exterior noise, then a layer of MLV on top would do it. Or ... a layer of some sort of lead product. Lead sheet sandwiched between two layers of CCF is about as best you can get, but is pricey. The lead sheet is super easy to work with, as you can mold it around tight bends and corners, and doesn't get in the way of reinstalling interior components. Resonix Barrier is a great product in this space, but it's gets super expensive ($31 per sqft!) to cover enough area to make a difference.
I'll probably do a thick MLV over what I have in the rear under the carpet and call it good.

When I do the front end, firewall, doors, and ceiling, I'll probably do it "right" with a thick butyl CLD and thick MLV on the floor/firewall. If the Siless seems to be holding up by the time I get around to the front end, I may go with their 120mil CLD.
 
Yes those AFX hemi Darts were flyweights and super fast.

I learned about building HP engines from Smokey’s books and magazines articles. Still relevant today and hard to beat!
 
Discussion starter · #38 ·
I'll probably do a thick MLV over what I have in the rear under the carpet and call it good.

When I do the front end, firewall, doors, and ceiling, I'll probably do it "right" with a thick butyl CLD and thick MLV on the floor/firewall. If the Siless seems to be holding up by the time I get around to the front end, I may go with their 120mil CLD.
The additional MLV in the rear will definitely provide more sound blocking for exterior noise making it through. In my GTO, I used the standard Luxury Liner which is 1/8" thick (without any CCF bonded to it), and placed it over the CLD. I reserved CCF for areas where there was panel to panel contact (to prevent rattles) which worked fine for me. That said, it is recommended to have a layer of CCF between the MLV and the surface you're installing it onto, to prevent vibration in the panel from transferring to the MLV itself. But if the panel is sufficiently damped (or is not prone to resonation), then I feel it's overkill.

For the ceiling, I would highly recommend spending the extra $$ considering the roof sees a lot of solar radiation which could have the metal reaching temps up into the mid 200's *F. Putting CLD on the roof is probably one of the things which will have the largest impact on wind/road noise especially in a Durango where the roof is so large and flat. You really can't put MLV up there though as it's too thick and heavy. Melamine foam is often used under the headliner. It's not sound blocking, but is sound absorbing; which is fine for the roof considering you don't really have many sound sources above the car. It's mainly to dampen rain and wind noise.

A well treated roof (CLD for damping + something for sound absorbing) is pretty wild to experience in the rain. You don't hear the rain drops on the roof anymore. It's a bit eerie actually LOL
 
I was basing it off of some pictures I saw of another owner doing something similar. I didn't see mass loaded vinyl on the wheel well, but maybe he had removed it already? Here is one of his pics:

View attachment 129898


Then I also saw this in my build sheet:

View attachment 129894

So I thought it was a premium package thing ... but now that I look at the comparison between the standard R/T and the Premium R/T, I see the premium insulation group is listed under Additional Interior Features on both of them:


Standard R/T:

View attachment 129895



Premium R/T:

View attachment 129896

So maybe there is no difference after all.
I know I'm really late to seeing this. Just saw the picture where you were talking about the previous owner, that would be me lol. The insulation was removed over the wheel well in that picture, it looks just like yours in you finished pictures
 
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