Yesterday I finished installing the Boom Mat White Sound Deadening Headliner into Tiny. This product is meant to help make the interior of the Jeep quieter by deadening the sound inside. Hopefully giving you that dead “I am in a car” sound.
Now while I am sure that Tiny is going to have many films made in it and this sound deadening is going to be a great asset, but I was more interested in the insolation in terms of temperature.
When you are in the Jeep on a cold day (I presume a hot one as well we just haven’t gotten there quite yet) I can feel the cold radiating down from the thinnest areas of the hard top. It isn’t drafty or super freezing but there is a noticeable chill (& I assume warmth in the summer but like I said we haven’t gotten there quite yet) from above.
Installation is dead simple. It has a super sticky adhesive (it actually reminds me of those crazy glue mouse traps) that you peel the backing from and stick down. Dead simple really. I did this install in two sessions, one where I pulled in the freedom panels and installed it here in the kitchen, and the other later when I pulled the Hard Top off.
It has these less dense foam strips that fill in the gaps in the ridges, presumably to make the final presentation look smooth. These strips are cut to the different lengths of the different ridges complete with letters on them to differentiate them from each other, although the instructions don’t seem to reference any of these letters, so you just eyeball what ones go where. :)
A couple of days later when it was a nice day out I did the inside of the rest of the Hard Top. At first I wasn’t going to take the hard top off like the instructions suggest and just awkwardly do it from the back seat. However, when I got into the backseat and looked up I realized that with the speakers all the other accoutrement obscuring portions of the ceiling I wouldn’t be able to get them up there very smooth and straight unless I took the top off.
Being that the Jeep is basically like grown up Lego I didn’t mind taking the top off. This was also a good time to show off the hoist I rigged up to quickly and easily pull the hardtop which I will chat about in the future.
With the top off It was again dead simple to do the rest of the install. I did my best not to put my weight anywhere on the hard top when I did have to lean in to to reach the back I did my best to put my hand on the centre spine area.
I didn’t get super crazy with magic eraser like I did with the Freedom Panels because they weren’t that dirty but mostly because I was lazy :)
Conclusion time!
Well thus far (with thus far being a full 1/2 day) they are pretty good. As to the sound deadening aspect of these panels? I know from the many studios that I have sound treated and rooms that I have recorded in, this is super subjective. I am sure that they do deaden the sound but I couldn’t tell you for sure how much. If I truly cared about that aspect I probably would have taken a decibel reading before and after but I didn’t… because I don’t :)
In terms of temperature. I haven’t really driven it much with the full panel install but I can say that on a long highway drive with just the freedom panels done there was a noticeable chill from the back and not on the top/front so they seem to be doing their job in that aspect.
Would I buy again?
Well there is no way that I wouldn’t have paid the $379.72 USD (so as of this writing nearly $500 CDN) that they are listed for on the Manufacturer’s website, but I must have gotten a quick deal at amazon because I paid about $200 Cdn shipped to my door.
All in all the product seems good quality and the adhesive is top notch but they foam is not of the quality that you would normally see in sound treating panels that I am used to in the music and studio world. which is why I assume a lot of the reviews I read don’t register an appreciable sound difference, but they seem to be doing the job that I bought them for.
I would have liked to see a way to not have the black foam show though all around the sides. I get that this is a non-issue for anything that is not the white version but I could do with out the black stripe that outlines each panel.
We will have to see if they hold up to abuse as well. Based on the install I think that they adhesive will hold up for years, it really was top freaking notch. I am more curious about the cuts scrapes and holes that will inevitably happen as the jeep gets used. In fact i went for the kit that didn’t have the side window surrounds as I with two young kids I don’t know if they would survive in such close arms reach :)
I am guessing with out care and attention paid to making sure they aren’t ripped by camping gear and the like they could look super ratty in no time at all. I will revisit this in a future post after we have trekked with them a few times.