Sound Deadening

[Canks]

The wife has been spoiled by cruising the dirt in a second gen Raptor in recent years. I got frustrated with how slow it was in the rough and didn’t really enjoy beating up an expensive truck, so I sold it. Problem is the wife no longer wants to be in a vehicle that is not as quiet or comfortable. So I wanted to start a discussion regarding noise deadening/quieting down the interior of a prerunner.

Couple themes:

• This is assuming no headsets. They obviously solve almost all of these problems, but headsets on a road trip suck. And honestly its nice to cruise without headsets on too.
• Body on frame vehicle build with a cage (I’m sure some of the ideas discussed would work on a tube chassis, but I assume most all of us cannot afford a full tab chassis setup)
• Priorities: Safety, reliability, comfort, speed. Unfortunately in order to get the fam to want to come out more I need to check my ego and prioritize comfort way before speed.
• This is in a fully sealed cab with windows.
• Please rate things in a 1 to 10.
  • 1 = not worth it
  • 10 = Mercedes sound level
• Assume the vehicle is running bypasses

1. Peel and stick sound deadening, with no other interior. This is what I would say I see as the most common setup on garage built prerunners. Did this change your comfort level in the vehicle? 1 to 10 how much of a difference did it make?

1a. Please note how much you put in the vehicle (ie:floor, rear wall, fire wall, ceiling, doors etc.

2. Wrapping the tube in sound deadening material, worth it or no? 1 to 10?

3. Isolating the cab cage on bushings from the rest of the chassis, worth it? 1 to 10? Note: cab cage can not have any metal to metal contact anywhere or you will negate your effort to bushing mount your cage

3a. When using isolation bushings, do you run urethane? Or something softer like an oem leaf spring bushing?

4. Bushing mount the upper shock eye of your bypasses? Effective? 1 to 10?

5. Bushing mount your entire upper shock mounts, effective? 1 to 10?

6. Bushing mount your suspension arm pivots. Obviously this opens up the situation for increase wear, deflection, and bushing squeak. But all OEM’s that I can think of bushing mount the suspension pivots front and rear. Worth it for road noise and isolation?

7. Interior plastics and carpet, I assume this is self explanatory. But how much better is an interior with it vs. without 1 to 10?

8. If we are going for ultimate comfort, is it worth it ditch the bypasses all together. Could you make a very quiet interior without bypass noise carrying in to the cage?

8a. Perhaps a big internal bypass coilover is the ticket?

8b. Does anybody make a large coilover that we normal people can buy? Bigger than 3” (not RG)

• Is this a dumb questions because of the price of springs?

9. What tips or tricks am I missing that are worth mentioning?

10. Honestly, how quiet can you get the interior of a real fully caged prerunner?

 

[DP_Tundra]

1. I used kilmat on my whole roof, rear firewall, and backseat area floor. Made a big difference in outside noise, and also eliminated almost all exhaust noise in the cab (which I dont like). This also made the bypass clicking exponentially louder inside. So much so that I’m seriously considering #8 on your list and going to 3.0 smoothies instead of the 3.0 bypasses I have now.

2. Haven’t tried this but you’ve got me thinking it might help with the bypass noise. You would probably have to wrap the entire cab cage to be effective in my mind.
3, 4, 5, yes
7. Definitely helps the more stock interior you can put back in with a cage.
8b. Yes, King makes a 3.5 coilover and yes the springs are silly expensive

9/10. You can get them fairly quiet. Just depends how much work you want to do. But I think the bypass clicking will always be the main annoyance, at least with King’s. They are the loudest of the bunch. Doing a full interior with lots of carpet and the tube work all wrapped and hidden under foam and material will be the best insurance.

 

[Canks]

3, 4, 5, yes

Any first hand experience with any of these? I've seen pics, but haven't seen it on any of the luxury prerunners. Which makes me question it.
Makes sense that it is better, but is it significant, or just better? Any negatives once the original work is done?

 

[DP_Tundra]

Not personally but some guys on here do. Charlie Brown and BrandonMiller both have bushing mounted roll cages. I’ve only ever seen bushing mounted shocks on random trucks and in pictures over the years

 

[Canks]

Gents @charlie brown @WW_RANGER_X what is your experience with sound deadening and its efficacy?

@Giant Geoff any chance you have some experience/knowledge you can share?

 

[Motiracer38]

When I first built my truck I was trying hard to maintain a comfortable, quite ride. I've since given up and bought headsets since the more I built it the more unbearable it became. The rear trailing arms were the biggest surprise noise maker, then the 9" gearset and floater hubs just compounded it. I'm convinced it is the hiems transferring the bulk of the noise and am going to rebuild uppers with a bushing on the cab side to see if it helps. Polyurethane takes so much maintenance to stay greased and quiet though. I've also gone down the rabbit hole of designing bushing mounted link mounts and upper shock mounts but haven't been convince they will help much. I've essentially built a unibody at this point so all noise transfers into the cab.

I once worked at a vibration test lab and built a fixture to test what frequencies different rubbers would transmit through. It fizzled out when trying to isolate the frequencies in my truck as the cacophony of noise was impossible to analyze. I still have it if anybody has access to bolt it down and run a sine sweep through it.

 

[Canks]

... Polyurethane takes so much maintenance to stay greased and quiet though. I've also gone down the rabbit hole of designing bushing mounted link mounts and upper shock mounts but haven't been convince they will help much. I've essentially built a unibody at this point so all noise transfers into the cab.

I kind of had a soft OEM leaf spring bushing in mind to use to isolate the cab cage. My experience with the OEM leaf spring bushings is that they last a long time and require zero maintenance. Im assuming they are relatively soft as well. Enough bushing connections should keep the cab cage rigid enough and allow the chassis to flex a bit as well. Just assumptions though.

 

[96f-u250]

Great thread, Ive been wanting to replace my Com9-T bearings on my FOA smooth body R.R. rear shocks on Daily F-150. The bearings had play and were squeaking and was being transferred into a stock unmolested cab. I used an Energy 9.8107R and a 5/8” OD x 1/2” ID shock bushing sleeves. I want to try it on my bypasses in my fully caged ranger next, if these hold up.

 

[charlie brown]

i have tried to keep the noise down to a tolerable level. short drives its good (2 hours). on longer drives or on a baja run with a group i like the head sets. it gives me options and it is easier to talk on the 2-way.

as far as build goes. my cab is bushing mounted. it gets tricky but i do still have a solid mount tube in a few spots to cut down the flex. i know that they will take most of the flex kinda like a torsion bar so i put them in a spot that can be inspected and a easy cut if i remove the cab.

inside i used the lizard skin/second coat 1st. manly for heat transfer and as a water proofer. it give me piece of mind knowing its A+ fire rated.
then i used a layer of a sound deadiner. over that i put a layer of the foam type sound. both came from kilmat.

i currently have one set of bypasses (on the front i went with one 3.0 ). on the rear i run say a way and the way they do the by-passes is different so i don't get the king clicking.
my head liner is made out of 3" foam. I cover the tube work with roll cage foam and cut the 3" foam to piece it in between. it helps a little and gives way more protection on my head.

it all helps in there own way. i think the ones with the most improvement made was the bushing mount cab, the clickers on the by-passes, the type of bushings for motor/trans mount. head sets for an option. i am not sure why but the head sets hurt my ears for some reason so i will not use them once in a while plus i can hear how the truck is running better.

if you want to run your truck like a race truck, you get race truck noise.