Pros and cons of undercoating a vehicle?

[Acer]

How about a subscription to the local automatic car wash with undercarriage blast?

[wurm]

Acer wrote:
How about a subscription to the local automatic car wash with undercarriage blast?

That may actually be a better use of the money. Good thinking!

[cbelt3]

FWIW up here in the rust belt we either recognize that rust never sleeps (Guitar riff), or use oil coating that’s applied annually.

[Todd's keyboard]

Thanks for the feedback. The car is a hand-me-down from my father-in-law to me with regular maintenance and only 103,000 km. (That's pretty low for fifteen years.)

I'd like to think it's the last car I will own. Early on, I had the stock speakers replaced with some Alpines. The sound is already pretty good. Around that time, I got a quote of $1,000+ to soundproof it with Dynamat and undercoating. Couldn't justify the cost.

I think I'll just leave things as they are. The stock tuner has an auxiliary jack, so I can still use my iPod for music and podcasts while on the road. At freeway speeds, and with my aging ears, podcasts are a challenge (and still manageable).

thanks again, Todd's satisfied keyboard

[Forrest]

Undercoating is typically applied to protect against rust. On YouTube, Legit Street Cars (Alex) is based in Chicago and works on plenty of cars with rust. Check this clip YouTube at 50:35 mark for his recommendation

On a 16 year old car, I wonder if pin holes in the exhaust system or muffler is the true cause of engine noise.

[mrbigstuff]

fluid film

[lost in space]

Harbourmaster wrote:
If road noise is what you are trying to quell the first place to look is tires.

After that I would suggest getting a quote to have Dynamat or a similar sound absorbing material installed in the interior of your vehicle.

Regarding tires, this is just our one instance, but tires made a huge difference in road noise with our 2014 Toyota Venza, known for being loud inside. We bought summer tires for it and went for the ones with high life expectancy. The hard compound supposedly gives back longer life but they're noisy due in part to their hard compound. Our winter tires are much softer with an aggressive tread pattern.

Turns out, even with the aggressive tread pattern, the winter tires aren’t nearly as loud as the summer ones, just the opposite of what we expected.


So, yeah, from my limited experience tire selection could be a big deal. But then how do you arrange an A/B comparison? I don’t know how you could arrange for that.

[Numo]

I don’t know anything about under coating, but the rustiest car I ever owned had a Z-Bart paint treatment.

[Harbourmaster]

On Tire Rack you can read comments about noise and IIRC they may even let you search using tire noise as a criteria

FWIW some tire manufacturers are now building “quiet” tires for EVs due to them being inherently quieter to begin with.

[macphanatic]

For interior sound deadening coating, I'd consider Lizard Skin. It does sound deadening and heat rejection.