When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I went with a material called Soundskinz by the recommendation of my audio installer. He gutted the entire interior and went through, I think 9 rolls, covering everything including above headliner, and extensively in door planels and over entire interior. All I can say it is the single best mod I could have ever done. It is not even the same car anymore. It added 75 lbs of weight so for a minor loss in performance it made the interior so much nicer when traveling at highway speeds, esp. on concrete. I have a Z06 that is supercharged so adding that extra weight still left me with gobs of power to play with. It is now much closer in road noise to a typical modern car.
Rammat from Rammaudio, its the best stuff out there.
Covered the entire trunk of my last Z, plus the steel panels behind the seats. Went from a Car that I could not hold a decent conversation with my wife to where I could be doing 70mph, windows down and radio blasting and we could talk and listen very well.....
Look into a partition as well, they cut out quite a bit.
Yes, the partition will help a lot! That is the easy, cheap fix as I did that first and it definitely helped some. Since I did the sound deadening treatment to the entire car though, the partition does not help me much at all. The sound deadening made that much difference.
Both are a good remedy but the partition is a band-aid and a proper sound deadening is permanent corrective surgery! You will have a sports car with bad intentions that is much quieter and tolerable inside.
Luggage...lots of luggage to fill the void. My wife is of the opinion that Louis Vuitton luggage is the best for sound deadening, lol.
On a serious note, there are two types of noise that you are hearing...and this is my opinion as I'm not an acoustical engineer but I did work with heavy equipment and ways to quiet the operators cabin to meet OSHA standards, operator comfort and operator safety.
Some cars have body panels that vibrate, buzz or resonate....those are the prime candidates for the dense tar type mats that people stick on like above. Dynamat was a popular name back in the day but there are many including plain old adhesive mats at your local Home Depot. These became popular years ago when people were running huge bass speakers and the actual speaker vibration was causing the body panels to buzz and sound like crap.
The other type of noise is exterior noise that you are hearing....engine noise, tire noise, wind noise, drivetrain noise and exhaust noise. The way to stop that noise is to create a barrier (air tight is best) to stop the noise from coming into the cabin. You can spend a crap ton of money putting self adhesive matting everywhere on the inside of your car, but if there are any gaps, holes, etc you will hear the noise. Your car might sound more "solid" but the dB meter will read the same. To make equipment operators cabins quieter, we followed the same rules that luxury car makers use....better window seals, better door seals, thicker glass and no holes, gaps or spots air can come into the cabin. Sound travels through air....making sure you have barriers up to stop the air from traveling into the cabin is key to keeping the dB's low.
A lot of companies are now spraying a flocking type material on the external side of the wheel well liner. The new Tahoes, Suburbans and Escalades use this and it drastically cuts down on tire noise because if the noise can't penetrate the wheel well liner, you're not going to hear it in the car.
