Loud cabin

PlatinumMSP said:
dude stop being such a pussy, you bought a sport wagon, not a ******* Oldsmobile. Cabin noise and outside noise is enjoyed by most enthusists.
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What?! I don't think anyone enjoys excessive cabin noise, and unfortunately it is found in most of today's cars because they cut costs by not deadening as well as they could. One of the gripes about the P5 in automotive magazines when it came out was that the engine was too loud because the tranny gearing kept the RPMs pretty high at highway cruising speeds. The car does contain a decent amount of factory installed sound absorbing material (if you look under the carpet I think you'll be surprised), but it's obviously not of the quality that say Dynamat or BrownBread would be. Now that I have installed my sub I can't believe how loud my radio is OUTSIDE of the vehicle either. It seems nuts.
 
Yes, the P5 interior is loud. I have a hard time hearing some people on my cell phone, and the person on the other end usually comments about the amount of noise they can hear from my end when I'm on the highway. I just tell them that I'll call 'em back, and then turn up my stereo to drown out the noise. If I wanted a quiet car, I would have kept my Maxima.
 
PlatinumMSP said:
dude stop being such a pussy, you bought a sport wagon, not a ******* Oldsmobile. Cabin noise and outside noise is enjoyed by most enthusists.
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Speaking solely for myself, I don't like to hear noise of any sort when I'm driving. Every sound the tires make in normal rolling is for me pure noise, it adds no enjoyment whatsoever to the driving experience. If the tires start sliding or screeching that I want to hear, but a monotonous drone on the highway? Not. I like to hear the motor but only loud enough to tell me how things are going under the hood, not so loud that I can't hear anything else. I mean, the P5 doesn't have the power of a real sports car so it really doesn't have an excuse for having as much motor noise as one. Wind noise - there shouldn't be any, even with the windows down. Very few cars can achieve that and the P5 certainly isn't one of them. I find driving with the windows open on the highway distractingly loud. I'm not sure how much of the noise that pours through the open window is tires, wind, or mechanical sounds, but who cares really what the mix is, it's all just a meaningless roar.

We tend to take the wife's Subaru Legacy wagon for long trips on the highway. Partially because it has a little more space in it than the P5, but also largely because we can carry on a conversation at normal volumes even at 80 or 85 mph. The Subie is a bit heavier than the P5, mostly due to the bigger motor and all the 4 wheel drive hardware, and it must have some more sound insulation. But I doubt that there's all that much more, maybe 25-50 pounds. I think maybe the difference is in the quality of the materials, the way it was installed, and perhaps a bit of thought given to sound levels at the design stage. So maybe the Legacy is more in the "Oldsmobile" category, anybody been in an Imprezza lately? That's about the same size as a P5. Is it as loud? (A normal one, not one of the turbocharged street rockets .)
 
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lol, i guess you guys arnt big fans of aftermarket exhaust systems, or almost any performance enhancing mods to your rides because they add a shitload of noise to your ride, hey i guess different people have different tastes, theres no need to complain though, if you wanted a silent car you shoulda bought one thats silent....like a Prius Hybrid lol, that thing you cant even tell the difference between when its off and when its on, really really trips me out
 
There is quite a bit of noise from the rear wheel wells. Everytime I hit a small puddle I look back to see if I've left a window open, you can hear all the water spray off the tire.
 
I love the sound of my P5 and it's loud as hell with an MAM midpipe and Magnaflow catback and with stiffer AWR mounts all around I get all sorts of vibrations and rattles. Personally I'd rather "feel" my car when I drive. Hell, my other vehicle is a 86 Toyota Pickup and that thing shakes, rattles and makes more noise than my P5 does and it's completely stock. Sure the car is rough and the g/f hates it but that's why she has a stock LX to drive (glare) .

On another note, yeah the 3rd Gen. Proteges are well known to have a lot of road and engine noise - I remember reading that in a Consumer Report way back when I was first thinking of buying the car. So yeah, the only thing to do really is look into some sound deadening material like others have suggested but that can be costly if you aren't going to do it yourself. If you don't want to do that then just stop complaining and turn up the radio because you should have looked into the car more before buying...
 
thrasher said:
There is quite a bit of noise from the rear wheel wells. Everytime I hit a small puddle I look back to see if I've left a window open, you can hear all the water spray off the tire.
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Got that right. My project took care of that.
 
altspace said:
Got that right. My project took care of that.
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Great, just what I needed. Add that project to my list.

You're really happy with the results? I'm just asking because it's an ambitious weekend project.
 
RatLabGuy said:
Direct on the topic - I have the factory sunroof. It is surprisingly loud. It has this tinted clear bug-deflector looking thing in front of it, not like many other sunroofed vehicles taht are just flat. Looks like a factory thing. I'm suspicious it is a major contributor to noise, not real sure what it does anyway. May start a new thread on that.
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THat reminds me, when I got the P5 it had the roof rack and that same "deflector". I did hear a lot of wind noise coming from above and would hear an annoying whistle at highway speeds, especially if the rear window was down.
I took that plastic thing off (try it out, two screws adn it lifts off easily) and then took the roof rack off too. Wind noise died down considerably. I don;t notice it much anymore but this car is certainly louder than your average Buick.
 
Hey, the car is not a Lexus, but a damn improvement to my ears. I used 30 sq.ft. of eDead in the entire car. I could have used more, but you really do not need to. Plus it is infact added weight. Easily 20 lbs. What you must understand is that the asphalt based material "eDead in my case" tightens the metal surfaces while the padding absorbs the sound. By simply adding just eDead, Dynamat, Brown Bread, etc. you are not going to block out exterior noise as well as you will with carpet padding.
 
We should have a cabin noise level contest....
I saw when this thread when it started and laughed about it.
Remember the "If it's too loud, your too old" stickers?

I have CAI, OBX header, custom hi-flow catted 2 1/2" mid-pipe to Ractive axl-back WITH a silencer.
It sounds like an airplane in 1st and 2nd I swear!
Josh'll tell you it's loud for sure.
I've been considering the sound proofing but can't justify the added weight. It's to contrary to my "all go" mentality.

Fix it, deal with it or get rid of it...
 
altspace said:
Here are photos of my complete teardown and adding on the eDead and padding.
http://altspace.com/p5/quite/
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Nice pictures, thanks.

1. The plastic vapor barrier on the inside of the doors was removed and you ran edead over the nasty black sticky stuff that holds it in place. For instance:

http://altspace.com/p5/quite/images/PICT3069.jpg

What did you use to glue the barrier back on over the edead? Perhaps a new bead of the nasty black sticky stuff (whatever it is called)?

2. Did you treat the inside panels of the door in any way? That is, the flimsy plastic part you had to pry off to gain access to the inside of the door. Perhaps covered it with edead or something else? Seems a bit tricky since the inside panel is held on with various oddball hardware and spacing it outwards very much might render those fasteners inoperable.

3. It looks like you removed the front seat rails and then laid padding down over the place where they go.

http://altspace.com/p5/quite/images/PICT3081.jpg

Did you then bolt the seats through that padding or did you cut grooves into it so that the seat rails could bolt firmly to the floor?

4. You put padding over the front passenger footwell. The ECU lives under there. How did you set that up so that the access to the ECU could be obtained if it became necessary to service it?

5. Was anything done to the ceiling?
 
Basically everything stock was carefully removed and put back into place using the same parts/materials. Yes, the inside of the door panels have eDead inside them as well. I cut each piece of padding for access to places. Hey, I could photograph only so much ya know. Nothing done to ceiling. Did not feel like tearing that down as well.
 
altspace said:
Yes, the inside of the door panels have eDead inside them as well.
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Which eDead did you use?

The older asphalt based v1 or v1SE, or the newer butyl based
v1^2 or v1SE^2?

(The ^2 is supposed to be a superscript 2, I couldn't figure out how to get the
web interface to do that.)
 
Most likely v1. I believe it was my first mod to the P5 as well.

4bhr67m.jpg
 
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RatLabGuy said:
I think a big part of the engine noise is the final drive gearing. It's pretty high. I'm sure it's different for the auto tranny, (maybe not as bad?)... but at 75, I'm turning at least 3500 RPMs, 80 seems around 4000? Have to be below 60 for it to < 3k.
This seems really high to me, and I'm sure accounts for alot of the volume. For example, both my wife's Saturn SL2 and my crappy old Merc. Tracer are at only 3k at 75, and just toodling at 60 or so. Granted this may mean on the highway you're not in the middle of the power band, but the engine noise is a WHOLE lot less. And neither of these are exactly comfy cars.
Best noise reduction would be a 6-speed tranny.
(shocked)

This aside, I hope to reduce noise by getting soem better/softer tires, likely the Pirelli P-Zero Nero M+S. Will be sure to report back on the effect.
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those cars arent meant to be sporty tho. just for reference, this cars 5th seems low to me, as in my first gen protege in fifth at 60 you are at 3500, 70 is 3750, 80 is 4250. having 60 at 3000 its phenomenally low. although the first gen at 4250 gets better gasmileage than the p5 at 3000 *grumble* also the sound deadening in the p5 compared to the 1st gen is incredible. you guys are really expecting to much out of a sub 20k car as far as noise reduction. its a cheap car. its going to have a loud cabin, but enjoy it. it lets you know the car is there, and its giving you feedback. quiet cabin = bad car that doesnt communicate to you. feel the road, enjoy the synergistic melding of man and machine, and drive it like you stole it.


























and if its still to loud, buy a buick ;)
 
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