More Sound Proofing

Sorry for the delays in updating the blog.  I have been beavering away on more modifications to the van and only now am I finding the time to put some words and pictures online.

Regular readers will know that I am keen on making the van as sound proof as possible so that the driving experience is more luxury car than panel van.  My latest focus has been to add insulation to the kitchen units, the engine bay and some other areas of the cabin.

Adding backs to the cupboards

The cupboards were initially installed without backs so that opportunity was taken to add some 6mm ply backs and to also add some soft open cell foam insulation to help absorb any high frequency noise and to block out any knocks and squeaks from inside the cupboards.  

preparing the panels for the foam insulation

This was a fairly straight forward exercise using some open cell foam I bought in a job lot from ebay. I simply cut the panels to size and then used some spray adhesive to secure the foam to the rear of the panels

foam attached

Another area of focus was the engine bay.  I decided to use some closed cell foam here to ensure that it didn't absorb moisture or oil.  The material was purchased from ebay and came with a sticky back, so it was a simple job of cutting, peeling and sticking.

attaching to the underneath of the bonnet

Foam as delivered

 I also decided to add some foam to the engine under tray as a lot of noise if sent from the sump area of the engine and then reflects from the ground back into the cab.  As you can see the under tray was incredibly dirty so the first task was to clean using a fairy liquid and water.

under tray before cleaning

under tray after cleaning

under tray with soundproofing

The last area of focus was the cab floor.  This is a slightly longer task as you have to remove the seats.  WARNING:  please remember do this exercise on flat ground with the wheels chocked as when you remove the driver seat you have to remove the hand brake.

Once the seats were removed the flooring was also pulled up and flash band was applied to the entire floor area.  Refitting the rubber carpet was a nightmare job, most probably because I didn't remove the lower plastic panel from underneath the gear stick.....  (learn from my mistakes!)

Passenger seat removed

Sound proofing - an obsession illustrated with pictures!

Having spent a lot of time sound proofing the back of the van earlier on in the project my attention turned to the cab area.  I used by iphone to identify areas of high noise (db meter app) and decided that a good start would be the dashboard. 

The general guidance with any sound insulation is that the first step is to block sound and the second step is to absorb the sound.  With this in mind I diassembled the dashboard as much as I could by taking off all of the access panels and by removing the glove box.  Having done this I then added flash band tape to the plat surfaces to reduce resonance and provide some absorption for the high frequency noise.

While the panels were removed I used some synthetic fibre wool to fill the voids behind the dashboard to provide some sound absorption.

After replacing the glovebox I lined the inside of it with flashband tape.

This item is the tray from the top of the dash, as you can see I added flashband tape to lower its resonant frequency and to provide some damping.

I stuffed this cavity full of wool, taking care not to interfere with the electrical harnesses and steering system.

Sound system

Its been a while since I have updated what I have been doing.  I have been doing quite a lot... so here goes.

Heres a view of the interior withe seat fitted.  Its amazing when I look back at the humble plumbers van I first purchased in August 2009 and see what can be achieved with a bit of elbow grease!

I decided that the sound system fitted in the van was no where near good enought so I went to Loughborough and purchased a new Alpine CD single DIN and a set of 4 'fly' speakers to replace the standard door speakers and also to install into the rear of the van.

Fitting the fly speakers in the doors was pretty straight forward.  I purchased the appropriate adaptors and they simply dropped in.  I connected them up via the supplier crossover system and hey presto all was done.

I decided that the 6*9s would work best mounted in the rear seat/bed base and so set about cutting the apertures to fit them.  This was a really straightforward job as the speakers came with the appropriate templates.

Heres a finished speaker.  I was quite pleased with the result.

I will add a better picture of the interior in due course.