hey I'm going to be helping my brother rip the interior apart on his '05 QC to put a bunch of sound deadening mat in when he gets back from his deployment. going to be using the 80-mil Rattle Trap sound/thermal barrier by Fat Mat as it's about the same as Dynamat but quite a bit cheaper.

is there anything I need to know about before we jump into this? do the door panels still use the super-awesome one way plastic push tabs? if so I'll just have him get new ones to make sure the door panels go back on tight.
we're planning on pulling the seats and carpet to get the floor, back of the cab and as much as we can on the firewall without pulling the dash out/apart.
is it reasonable to drop the headliner down or not? I'm assuming with the overhead computer, dome light and pillar trim pieces removed it'll drop down, right?

I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and probably do a write up on it, mostly to serve as a warning to anyone else considering it...

 

I had the cab of my last truck done. Albeit it was a Chevy I had them replace all of the trip clamps so I would not have to worry about loose or squeaking trim.

Good luck, it will make a big difference.

 

I have been thinking about doing this too... Keep us posted I'd like to know how it turns out..

 

I'm currently mid process in doing this, got the whole interior ripped out of the cab today and got a door and a half done on one side. tomorrow I'll be finishing the doors and tackling the floor, roof and back of the cab.

it's been interesting, I'm taking lots of pictures that I'll post up here in a week or two. as soon as I get home from being here(out of state) I'm moving to another house, so I'll have my hands full for a while. and I don't have a card reader to load the pics onto my comp out here.

 

The door panels are the sweetest designed panels I've ever seen. There are three obvious bolt to remove, lift the interior door handle up halfway and the there is a bolt to remove the handle, then the panel just slides up and off. Easy!

Why are you doing this Jon? The 3rd gens are pretty well insulated.

 

eh, they're well insulated relative to the 2nd gens; wait till I post some pictures of the factory 'sound deadener' that they put in. for the two days of work it'll be more than worth it. with the windows up, it'll be nice and quiet; with the windows down, it's still the same 5" exhaust beast with 35's.

oh the main reason for improving the sound deadening is it makes the stereo sound quality skyrocket.

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just did the official test drive now, about 11:00 tonight, long day of thrashing. it's SOOOOO nice! we put 150 square feet inside the cab and had some more that would've been nice to be able to do but dang, it's QUIET in there now.

at 75mph it sounds about the same as it used to at a coasting 20mph, there's no wind noise, the tire noise from the 35" A/T's is very minimal and the 5" exhaust he was about to put an additional straight through muffler on is hardly noticeable now. and even the crappy stock speakers sound pretty good in there...so with some good speakers and an amp, the sound will be incredibly clean!

I can't recommend this upgrade enough. A lot of people have their own preference on which sound deadener to use, I don't care, go with what you like. The FatMat RattleTrap stuff worked fantastic in this application.

Of course when you do something like take the entire interior out and put it back in, there's a few things to be learned the hard way unless you get some pointers on it. so I'll be providing those pointers when I get back home to upload the pictures and do a short writeup on the process. Very worth while, I'm excited to go put 100sq ft in my Mexican Mtn Goat, now...oh and get the head gasket fixed, too

 

I've been wanting to do my truck for a long time, Check this site out:

RAAMaudio - Quality and Value in Automotive Sound Deadening

Good product and good install info.

 

Anyone know where to get some for a 2nd gen?

 

I recamend Second Skin products sound deadener show down Here.

 

???? it's just a roll of sticky mat that you lay on the metal...

the Fatmat is definitely the 'least expensive' route, some people even say bad things about it; it seems to work very well and was worth the price. I've heard very good things about the Second Skin, though it doesn't differ much in price from dynamat.

got a few hours in the cockpit of that thing again today, the typical exhaust drone of a few psi boost on the freeway is all but non-existent; it makes it really nice to carry a conversation, even from front to back seats, with the stereo on low volume and still audible.