| ocfoilist |
06-11-2010 01:21 PM |
I installed Hushmat Ultra throughout the car, from the rear end right up to just under the dash. Clean and very thorough install by Beach Audio in Huntington Beach, CA. The whole process took about 7 hours and I watched the entire time. Disassembly is definitely a time-consuming process and I can imagine that it would take a lot longer if this was the first time you were disassembling a car (looking at the guy doing the work, it definitely helps to have 'been there, done that'). The whole process - labor and material - ran about $800. I could definitely have done it cheaper myself, but I decided not to spend the hours it would take me to do something like that, not to mention the inevitable breakage of clips, etc, that would probably ensue from my first attempt at doing something like this.
As for the results, I can definitely say that there is clear improvement, but you aren't going to get a completely quiet cabin. For me, I wanted to reduce the road noise more than the engine and I definitely didn't want to mess with the sound of the exhaust (which I love - thanks Stillen)!
The Hushmat did about what I expected it to: the cabin is definitely quieter, particularly on surface streets. I would say that driving around town, I have an almost silent cabin in terms of road noise. As for freeway driving, cabin noise creeps back in but it depends a great deal on the type of road surface. For all but the grooved cement segments, the cabin is still very quiet, but the will definitely vary depending on what you are driving on.
Obviously, the tires have a big impact on this as well and I will be moving away from the stocks once I burn through them. Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of satisfaction with noise reduction vs. expense, I am a 7: a lot better but certainly not perfect.
There are, of course, other products out there that may have a different impact on noise reduction. I stayed away from foam installation as it can have an effect on how the panels come back together. I would say that your odds of successfully installing some foam are better in the Z than in, say, a BMW since the fit and finish isn't quite as tight in Nissan's products. But after reading up on these various products, the amount of foam that you can fit into most of these panels is very small and I didn't get the feel from many of the customer feedbacks that it made a big difference. As for the dampening ability of Hushmat vs. Dynamat, I feel that you are primarily paying for the Dynamat name and that many of these other products, like Hushmat and SecondSkin, are just as good for less money.
At any rate, I hope this helps others come to an informed decision about dampening. I know there are strong opinions on what material to use, how much of it to use and how effective it all really is, but for me this was a good trade-off between effort, money and return on investment.
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