# 2006 Scion xB front door deadening and sealing



## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

I've been working on my front doors sporadically for weeks now, mostly making templates and cutting wood and plastic for a set of covers to seal up the big holes in the inner door skins of my Scion xB. I'll let the pictures tell the story, and add only minimal captions.

The inner door skins. I've put Stinger RoadKill on the largest, flattest areas:







My arm, leg, and the uncovered door panel when I was running an errand  This is a *very narrow* car. I got more legroom with the door panel off 



to be continued in the next post...


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

Now, onto the outer door skin. I drilled out the rivets holding the OEM speakers to the doors, and temporarily replaced them with some socket-cap screws, nuts, and washers. My custom midbass baffles will go into place when I'm finished.

*PRO-TIP: I have found that the RoadKill [or any CLD product] is easiest to work with by cutting it into 6" square pieces ahead of time. Cut it up and make two equivalent stacks; one for each door to be deadened.*

I kept a marker, metal ruler, cutting board, and a box cutter by the car in case I needed to cut it into smaller pieces [6"x3", 3"x3"], most of which can be seen in the pictures.






I have at least 25% coverage on the outer door skins. There will be more added later as I finish up the doors, but some of it is reserved for the panels I'm creating to close up the inner skins.

The inner door skins have some complex bends and curves on them, and while screwing some sheet metal over the holes would be fast, it would look sloppy. I made a set of templates out of cardboard, made them sturdier in MDF, and then used that to create some acrylic panels. The smallest of the three pairs of holes was the easiest:



While the driver's side door was used for most of the work, this is a picture of the passenger's side. Symmetry FTW 



[insert missing step here - making MDF templates and routing acrylic sheets]



Note the notches in the sides of the pieces, as well as the two holes in each of the acrylic. The notches are for a ~1/2" thick wiring harness to pass through, and the small holes will be used to hold the acrylic in place with a "push-stick" I made. What am I doing that requires the "push-stick"? I'm heat-forming the acrylic to the bends of the door, as seen in the first of three pictures above. The two small holes will be covered by CLD and/or CCF, and the wiring harness will be snug within the notch, then covered with some CCF. 

It's impossible to get the doors completely air-tight, but I'm going to try to cover as many areas as possible - like the gaps between the acrylic and the wiring harness! 

more to come...


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

The mid-sized hole proved the most difficult to work with, as there's a complex bend in the metal towards the back end of the door, as well as the locking rod and door-release cable to deal with.

First version of the template:




Second version of the template:



The version above was modified with an additional mounting tab directly under the lock button:



...and went to "production" in 1/8" MDF, then 1/8" acrylic, then 1/16" polystyrene. I'm still not happy with the outcome, so I'm making another version and redoing them, but not until I finish the acrylic covers for the largest holes in the doors. 

Here's what they look like at this point, and here's the preliminary template for the largest hole in the door skin:




The door panels have two foam blocks on them which protrude into the door cavity through the inner skins. Here's a quick shot showing how I'm going to have to shave off some of the foam:



I hope to update this thread later this week with more pictures of the largest panels I'm making for the doors. I'll throw in some of the "test fit" pictures I did, where I held the panel onto the door with one hand, and held my cameraphone inside the door to see how it fit from the inside 

*ONE MORE THING: the black material on top of the CLD in the pictures above is ~1/4" CCF that I got from a couple of 'computer noise deadening' kits.* I've only used a little bit of it so far, but I intend to cover a lot of the CLD with it, as well as use it for gasketing material for the panels mentioned in this thread.


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## captainobvious (Mar 11, 2006)

Looks great so far. Nice job on the templates and plexi panels.


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

captainobvious said:


> Looks great so far. Nice job on the templates and plexi panels.


Thanks. I wish I could get paid for all the work I'm putting into this 

On a side note, in some of the pictures you can see where I covered the edges of the CLD pieces with foil tape. It's nearly weightless and extremely thin, and covers up the CLD so there can't be any "squeeze-out".


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

Monday-evening-visibility-bump


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## Shinju (Jul 11, 2008)

I just put 2 or 3 layers of fatmat over those large gaps. I also removed that crappy styrafoam too, mine for some reason when I touched it started to disinagrate and made a mess.

Interesting take for what you are doing lets see the final product!

Also the door plungers (Top plastic pieces) are ****ing annoying no matter what I do they rattle so I am going to try and wrap them in felt. What did for the metal part of the plungers was get small split loom wrapped them up and put fatmat over them so it they are protected inside the split loom and an move freely but do not rattle.


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

Shinju said:


> I just put 2 or 3 layers of fatmat over those large gaps. I also removed that crappy styrafoam too, mine for some reason when I touched it started to disinagrate and made a mess.
> 
> Interesting take for what you are doing lets see the final product!
> 
> Also the door plungers (Top plastic pieces) are ****ing annoying no matter what I do they rattle so I am going to try and wrap them in felt. What did for the metal part of the plungers was get small split loom wrapped them up and put fatmat over them so it they are protected inside the split loom and an move freely but do not rattle.


I'm building the panels so the interior of the door can be accessed later without having to cut something out [like FatMat, for example] and replace it. The only exception will be the smallest holes I'm covering, where the acrylic pieces will be "glued" in with silicone caulk in a semi-permanent manner.

I want to leave the foam blocks, especially the large one, because it provides a bit of support for the interior door panel, and I figure it will press the largest hole cover into place when the door is closed, providing a little more pressure to keep it sealed.

I've noticed the lock plunger rattling too, and I'm not sure how I'm going to address it, but I took care of the lock rod with those "flaps" on the rear end (heh) of the cover panel.  This area might be "open", but I'm OK with that, as it's about as far from the speaker as it can be. Maybe some of the ~1/4" foam I'm using can press on the lock rods and quiet them down a bit


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

UPDATES! 

I ended up making three different versions of one of the panel sets, and I thought I was going to use these:



One of them ended up breaking, so I went back to the second version of the panels, in polystyrene. Here they are, mounted to the doors:





Here they are, covered with foam on the fronts and backs. As you can see, I still have a bit more foam to attach... during my 5-day weekend that just started! 



And, finally, here's a shot of one of the largest panels that I needed to create. These are made of 1/8" acrylic, and I still need to deaden them and put foam over most of them, plus trim the yellow foam blocks that are attached to the door cards:



I know you're probably full of questions, so go crazy!


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

Visibility bump


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

Here's some photos of the [almost] finished panels:





They're basically done at this point, with the exception of adding some more foam to cover the visible sides.


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

No updates to what you see above in the past 1.5 months - it's just been too damn hot. I had some time yesterday, so I opened up the rear doors, lifted the vapor barrier out of the way,and put 1.75 square feet of RoadKill on each outer skin.

There was an _immediately noticable difference_ in the wind noise 

My focus now will be on the wheel wells!


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## bmxscion (Jan 31, 2011)

Nice work once again....I am so close to being back in the US I can almost taste it. I have a few awesome things on tap I haven't mentioned to anyone yet that is going to be awesome. Not the right place to talk about that in this thread though....


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

bmxscion said:


> Nice work once again....I am so close to being back in the US I can almost taste it. I have a few awesome things on tap I haven't mentioned to anyone yet that is going to be awesome. Not the right place to talk about that in this thread though....


Thanks. It's nice to have work complimented 

Here's a couple pictures of what I did last night on the door panels. I had the big foam blocks out for a while, and I cut and sanded them down so they wouldn't protrude through the holes in the inner door skin - they can't anymore, anyway, because of the covers 

I've selectively deadened the inner door panels and put on CCF, and the foam blocks have the CCF both where you can see it in the second picture, as well as behind them against the plastic:


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## adrenalinejunkie (Oct 17, 2010)

Good stuff. I'll have to come back to this when I treat my doors.


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## jhsellers (Jan 7, 2012)

HondAudio said:


> Thanks. It's nice to have work complimented
> 
> Here's a couple pictures of what I did last night on the door panels. I had the big foam blocks out for a while, and I cut and sanded them down so they wouldn't protrude through the holes in the inner door skin - they can't anymore, anyway, because of the covers
> 
> I've selectively deadened the inner door panels and put on CCF, and the foam blocks have the CCF both where you can see it in the second picture, as well as behind them against the plastic:


Nice work on the doors, HondAudio. 

I hope you're planning to hang a layer of Mass Loaded Vinyl in there, too? I think that will put the crowning touch on your deadening efforts. 

Best,
John


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## HondAudio (Oct 19, 2006)

jhsellers said:


> Nice work on the doors, HondAudio.
> 
> I hope you're planning to hang a layer of Mass Loaded Vinyl in there, too? I think that will put the crowning touch on your deadening efforts.
> 
> ...


I just might! I put some generic "HeatWave" insulation material behind the factory kickpanel covers over the weekend, and there was an immediate reduction in high-frequency tire noise from the front fenders. When it gets a little cooler and I have an entire weekend, I need to take apart the back end of the car again and cover the rear wheel wells.

...I'll do it when I take out the amp rack to carpet it


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