I ordered 5 sheets of Fat Mat from Amazon and let them sit under the patio for a week to get rid of any smell they might have had. Some folks have noted they smell oily.

It took most of a Saturday (taking my time) to install Fat Mat on
- all 4 doors
- the spare tire well
- the kick panels of both front seats
- the rear wheel well arches
- under the back seats.

The roaring sound of drive at 60+ over all but the newest roads was cut down to about 1/4th! There is 0 smell, although I did cover some of the sections with aluminum tape so it looks better.

Total cost: ~$60

I discovered that its much easier to work with on a cool morning. Its easier to cut and holds it shape while trying to slide pieces into place. In the cool it's about 1/2 as sticky though so wait until the heat of the day to re-press everything before closing all of the panels. Nothing seemed to be peeling away once it makes contact.

-obi

 

Thanks for posting about this. I want to do some soundproofing to mine and will look into that product. Did you replace the plastic vapor barrier in the door panels? If so, what did you use?

- Dustin

 

I deal with the outrageous intake/exhaust drone and road noise on the highway by driving below 60 or over 80 and turning off my hearing aides.

 

The vapor barrier is easy to pull away. it left half of the sticky stuff on the door so I pressed it back on when done. Its a sad excuse for sound deadening.. so thin.

 

Good deal. I haven't pulled my door panels off for anything yet, so I didn't know exactly what the vapor barrier was, just that it's there.
Thanks

- Dustin

 

I had a Gibson cat back exhaust on a 2004 Dodge Ram Hemi that was like that. It droned the loudest at exactly 70 mph. I eventually got so tired of it that I put the stock system back on.

- Dustin

 

I put Fat Mat in my Fit back in 07' and its still holding strong to this day!!! Good stuff

 

That's great to hear! Everything bonded really well for me. I don't have any pieces upside down so gravity shouldn't work against me.

I plan on putting the last few scraps inside the tailgate just to use them up.

 

Pulling the panels off was the worst part. it has these orange screws holding the panel on. I got a hold of a corner and gave it a tug. A couple chipped. The trick to taking the ones that stay on the door off is to push a socket on the back side which collapses the prongs allowing it to come off the door. You can't put the panel back on if the orange screws are on the door. They all need to be back on the panel.

 

I got on Amazon yesterday to look for the sheets of fat mat. What size did you order and was it enough for your application?

 

I bought "FatMat 25 Sq Ft x 50 mil Thick Self-Adhesive FatMat Sound Deadener Bulk Pack w/Install Kit"which ran $54.99. That was enough for all 4 doors with a few scraps left over to cover about 1/4 of the spare wheel well.

I have since bought more to do the entire tailgate and the rear quarter panels.

All thats left (I think) is to drop the wheel liners and put this stuff on top at some point later on. I'm really happy with the way sound is isolated now.

-obi

 

I just received a 50sqft roll of this myself and am excited to see how well it works. It will be a couple of weeks before I can get started, but I'm planning on doing all 4 doors and the spare tire well to start with. I cut the roll into ~10ft strips and spread them out over some saw horses in the garage to let them air out. They do have an oily smell out of the box. The sound deadening material actually looks and smells a lot like road tar to me. I was suprised at how heavy it is. The 50sqft roll was probably 20-30lbs, which I'm sure helps with sound and vibration damping.

-Dustin

 

I was finally able to install this in the front and rear doors, behind the kick panels in the front, and in the spare tire well. The road noise level in the car has been greatly reduced and the radio even sounds clearer and a little louder. I actually had to reduce the treble a notch to get the same sound.

 

Just a couple of notes from the install:
- I found this to be an easy project, but very time consuming. I have about 11 hours in it so far and still need to install over the rear fender wells and possibly the hatch. About 6sqft of the 50sqft roll is left, so the 50sqft roll seems perfect as long as you're not removing carpet or the headliner.
- The kit came with a small razor knife, but I found that it was easy to cut with a pair of scissors. The ones I used were stainless steel for $1 at the Dollar Tree.
- The material is much easier to fish into the tight spaces in the door panels when cut into ~4"x6" pieces. You can see from the pics that I did a lot of piecing together and overlapping.
- The adhesive on the back of the FatMat is extremely sticky. As long as the metal surfaces are pretty clean I don't see how this stuff would ever come loose.

-Dustin

 

I must have gotten lucky, because I was able to reuse all of the plastic clips. A few of them had pieces of the plastic broken off, but were still usable. Some of them did stay on the metal door panel, so like oberon mentioned make sure to take them off the metal door and put them back on the plastic door panel.

-Dustin

 

I wanted to post a long term update to my install. The tar-like backing that the FatMat is composed of seems to slowly break down over time. I'm guessing the heat of the summer caused parts of it to melt a little. There is a stream of black tarlike material coming out of the weep holes on the front driver and passenger doors. "Bug and Tar Remover" takes it off with no problem, but if I don't stay on top of it it looks pretty bad. I've been enjoying the sound deadening qualities, but I don't think I would install it again given the time consuming install and the fact that now it's seeping out the door weep holes.

-Dustin