I discovered, in driving back and forth from Home Depot, that my van was incredibly loud and jangly. Running over bumps in the road was deafening, and the acoustic aftermath of potholes lingered for minutes after I’d barreled through them.
In order to combat this, I decided to employ the same technique used by ricers around the world - ungodly amounts of Dynamat. For those who don’t know, Dynamat is a butyl based noise damping material comes as a heavy, flexible, sticky, aluminum backed sheet of something akin to tar.
Given that I was on a budget and that I had a huge van to cover in the stuff in, I opted for the cheaper generic butyl damper sheets that were available on Amazon. This stuff is applied by cutting it to size, sticking it onto the surface in question, and rolling vigorously until all air bubbles are gone and the mat is stuck well and good. I applied it to the wheel wells, unsupported areas of the floor, the walls, and the entire roof. All in all, I applied ~100 lbs of the stuff. The result was a significant reduction in wind noise and road noise, and a much more controlled acoustic response to rough roads.
