Experimentation; Butyl Sound Deadening Tiles (2024)

David Paul

Join Date: May 2016

Location: Rural Southern Arizona

Posts: 3,815

For the life of me, I can't seem to find the post on this subject that was submitted about a week ago. I would like to give the poster credit for inspiring me to do some sound deadening work. I hope the OP will come into this thread and take a well deserved bow.

There haven been a lot of posts and threads on this forum over the years regarding sound insulation. The pricing is quite variable from very expensive to relatively cheap. The choice of brands are many more than when I first got my ND, over 5 years ago.

Don't you just love a competitive business market, as opposed to communism? We all win.

I chose to experiment with Kilmat, which is a relatively inexpensive brand. It is Butyl rubber covered with a very heavy duty aluminum foil material. Most people generally agree that Butyl has the best sound insulating property from what I have read. But, I'm sure there are those who will disagree. I only know what I've read and have experimented with.

This product is extremely easy to work with just using a tape measure, scissors and keeping your fingers off of the sticky side.

I have an after market exhaust system, an OpenFlash, center exhaust. It is much deeper sounding than OEM and definitely not irritating, for me. At highway speeds, I am unable to hear it mainly due to over riding tire/road noise.

I got the idea of doing this was from a post this week from another Forum member who used the 50 mil, Kilmat material. This is the same thickness of Kilmat that I ordered from Amazon and got within 3 days.

After removing all of the interior panels and floor covering of my trunk, I installed Kilmat panels on the floor and all four sides of the trunk. My first attempt was only one layer. I thumped the bottom the trunk with my index finger knuckle and it still sounded tinny and loud. Never the less, I took the car out for a test ride. There was a slight improvement but not enough to brag about. So, back to the drawing board.

This time, I added a second layer on the bottom of the trunk but left the sides with only the first, single layer. After thumping the bottom with my knuckle, there was a definite improvement but still a bit of the metallic, tinny, hollow sound. The test drive proved to be a bit better but still not to my satisfaction. Time for another layer.

Okay, now I've got the bottom of the trunk covered with 3 layers for a total of 150 mil but still only one layer on all 4 sides. From the very beginning, the sides seemed quite solid with literally no Kettle Drum sound. That's why I only put one layer on them.

Now it was time for the 3rd test drive. This time, there was almost no sound of the rear tires crossing those tar strips, which was kind of a slapping sound. After getting on the Interstate with a speed of 79 mph, the difference was fantastic. I could actually hear my exhaust and my wife and I were able to have a completely normal conversation without having to raise our voices one bit.

The sound of the road was only a very mild swishing sound and of course, we could still hear the sound of wind moving over the canvas top. All of these tests were done with the top UP.

I knew that adding a 4th layer in the trunk would not produce any better results than I already had with 3 layers. I was and am completely satisfied with the current results.

Something I definitely learned with this experiment is that I should have purchased the 80 mil, Kilmat, as opposed to the 50 mil, Kilmat. I would have had the same results with the 80 mil that I had with the 50 mil but would have only used 2 layers on the trunk floor as opposed to 3 layers.

My actual cost using the 50 mil to do the entire trunk was only $9.60 including tax from Amazon. That was using only 8 tiles.

If I had used the 80 mil from the start, the cost may have been a bit less by using only 2 layers on the bottom and would have been slightly easier.

The bottom line is, I can hardly believe what a drastic change I made in lessening the cabin noise and how little work and money it took. And since the box contains 50 Kilmat tiles, I still have 42 left to insulate my doors and eventually the floor.

My real preference would probably be having Kilmat in both thicknesses. Then I'd have enough to mix and match, plus, I could slap a tile on everything that doesn't move, or gets too close to me.

My wife may also get the ideas of slapping one across my lips. This stuff is very sticky.

I have left both links at the bottom for the 50 mil and the 80 mil.

https://www.amazon.com/Kilmat-Deaden...ts_id=15709561

https://www.amazon.com/Kilmat-Deaden...ts_id=15709561