Sound deadening

Consult your local custom car audio installer... they have a dizzying array of products to choose from. Specifically, see if they offer "Dynamat"

New rubber seals around the doors and trunk, plus a nice high-flow aftermarket exhaust would help too.

C7eca wrote:

I recall reading about one bug restorer who purchased a number of inexpensive mouse pads, and glued these like tiles to the bare metal of the floor. For other areas he used the silver-backed bubble wrap, the kind used in home insulation. Less expensive than popular sound deadening products, and the materials evidently worked.

Talking about high flow aftermarket exhaust, are there any that work with the stock heat exchangers the way that the stock exhaust does? Please advise your opinions. Thanks, Jeremy

David, your description of the noise and it's peaks, says to me that someone has removed something from the body either during a cleaning session while it was down to a shell, or while doing a respray on the paint. Your post doesn't indicate what year model car this is so I am unsure of the reality of all the parts that SHOULD be there for this sound deadening situation. Early cars used what many have called "tampons" or "diapers". these were basically some sort of insulation ( fiberglass, cotton or some other type of fluff) that was in a plastic bag. I have pulled a couple of these out of early models, per side in some instances. others just one per side. I'm leaning toward this because if it were a later car it is something more akin to triple expanding foam that was blown in and is very hard to remove and will likely be removed only a little while replacing a burned out wiring harness or similar. In the event that you may try to understand where this is without me saying,................well, youd be SOL........so I will describe. The area behind the side glass ( rear ) toward the engine bay. this whole area between that piece of glass and the rear glass ( one you see looking at cars directly behind you while driving ) should be pretty much full of some sort of foam or stuffing. This insulation will knock out a huge bunch of noise that is produced by all the things in the engine compartment.

Now there is the possibilty that I'm way of base here though...........Hell, ............could be holes in the package tray behind the reaer seat too.................LOL

Hope this helps at all.

Remove "YOURPANTIES" to reply MUADIB®

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News

You're really asking for a wise guy response with a question like that, so I'll provide it - keep it under 70 MPH.

On to the serious portion of my reply. I had noise troubles such as you probably can't imagine with my Squareback when I bought it. A PO (curiously enough I later had a co-worker who recognized the SB and had known the fellow, and another friend turned out to know the girl who sold it to me) had allowed a mechanic to talk him into the awful FI to carb swap too common on T3s; this mechanic installed a single carb system with an air filter which stuck above the engine compartment. The installation was accomplished by removing the top piece which goes on the engine cover, cutting a hole in the engine cover, and placing a thin hard plastic cover over the hole. For those of you unfamiliar with Squarebacks, the engine cover has grooves ~1/8 to 1/4 deep and ~3/4 wide; this means that placing the plastic cover directly onto the lid rather than onto the covering which is normally glued to the lid leaves the engine compartment completely exposed every ~3/4 of an inch. The plastic lid was poorly screwed on, leaving a crack around one of the screw holes. A large amount of duct tape did a wholly inadequate job of sealing the noise out until I finally was able to afford to have Mofoco improperly install a dual carb system which killed my new engine two weeks after I was finally able to retrieve my car from them (which was a week after Mofoco originally claimed it was ready and about a month after the date they'd originally quoted).

...................FI to carb conversions are often bad news for a variety of reasons. Your example is the kind of hack job that reminds me of a squareback that one of my brothers bought back more than a few years ago. He got so frustrated trying to sort it out that he resold it within about a year.

Actually, you are dead on. The body was stripped and the wiring harness was replaced. Let me look and use a probe back there. Thanks! David

Our local Best Buy sells Dynamat by the roll. Check out Best Buy's stereo department if you have one nearby.

My Beetle was field stripped for interior paint. There are tarboards on all the floor and tunnel areas, but the rear shelf is bare. Engine noise and vibration at most any speed is pretty loud. Before I put in a carpet kit (due in the next few months), I'm going to dynamat the rear parcel shelf then put in whatever is supposed to be there (what is supposed to be there?) instead of the old flannel sheet I have all wadded up back there right now.

Malcolm '69 Beetle (Gus)

I just use a couple of layers of cardboard.........corigated of course.

Remove "YOURPANTIES" to reply MUADIB®

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News