I've had the dynamat installed in my '04 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport for about a month now and it was well worth the effort. When I say effort, I tore out my entire interior to install this stuff. Inner and outer door skins, entire floor (doubled up in places), trunk (doubled up again), rear hatch, and under my hood. It took a total of about 17 hours to install and trashed my hands, cuts and sore for several days. I used the dynamat heavy-duty roller for most of the installation and the handle of the roller to push the material into tight crevacises. My entire car, exluding the roof, took 2 3/4 bulk packs. I still have some left over and trying to figure out what to do with it...
The results: You could say I was skeptical like other users, mostly because I hadn't known anyone who used it or what dynamat was even made of really. It's basically sheets of tar (butyl rubber) backed with thick aluminum foil. This stuff is heavy, but pretty thin and tucks into tight places pretty easily. While at first I noticed an increase in my cars weight, it seems to be less noticable the more I drive. What's more noticable is the quiet ride and solid-feeling the car now has. The doors really do close with a thud and not that reverberating tin-can sound like before. The entire chassis feels much more rigid and stiff, like a higher priced, luxury car. My roommate, who drives a Benz C-class, said the stiffness was immediately apparent and the road noises was significantly reduced. This girl loves to drive and she was pretty impressed with the results.
The amount of road noise from freeways was almost difficult to carry on conversations or listen to music clearly before. Much more quiet now. If you've ridden in a subaru impreza, you know how loud they are! While it's not Lexus quiet, it's much, MUCH better than a stock subaru. There's still some noise, but I wasn't able to cover the firewall as much as I would have liked and my tires are lousy. When new tires are needed, I'm going back to a quality set and that should help a lot more. (BTW, Bridgestone-made Fuzion HR's suck a$$, but they are cheap.) I'm going with Bridgestone Turanza's next time.
My intention was purely to block out road noise and make a more comfortable environment for myself and passangers. A bonus to killing the road noise was the improvement in my cars audio quality. I had previously installed an Alpine h.u., Alpine speakers and Audiobahn d-class amp w/ a 10" sub and it really brought my system to life. I never knew what mid-bass was till after the dynamat was installed. I'm amazed to get that much thump, out of 6 1/2" door speakers!! I had to go back into the headunit and re-adjust my equalizer because the entire soundstage totally changed. It really allows me to enjoy my music to it's fullest without an amp for the door speakers, which is nice! My music consists mostly of hardcore, metal-core, metal and punk. The dynamat really brought out crisp, clean sound that wasn't distorted at higher volumes like before. It's also allowed me to tune in really precise and crisp bass hits from my single 10", enough to make my rearview mirror droop with each hit. I love hearing and feeling the kick drums in heavy music.
All-in-all, I am extremely pleased with the results. At first I was tired and my hands and back ached from two straight days of installation, all the while thinking "what the hell am I doing!?". But now, I can sit back on a drive, carry on conversations without raising our voices, listen to my music with better definition and clearity, or enjoy a nice peaceful interior alone. It's been well worth the effort.
Would I do it all over again??
In a heartbeat on this car. Hopefully the next car will be more quiet from the factory... if not, I'll probably dyanmat that one too!Get more detail about
Dynamat 10455 Xtreme Bulk Pack 9 Sheets.
