Luckily the family Aygo is a 5 door, on doors its possible to remove the door card and stick some cut out panels on the inner skin between door and card, i've seen thinner say 3mm (and thicker around 10mm) panels for sale which would be easier in such places, unless i had to gain access to the door interior mechanism i'd be inclined to not muck about with the waterproof membrane.

I don't know what the trim covering the rear blank on the 3 door Aygo is like, doesn't it clip off like a door card leaving you free to stick a panel or several jigsaw style over the bare primed metal?

If you have an Aygo, the car in question i also revamped the sound system, bought all four replacement speakers via the net and a £40 Sony head unit from Halfords better than half price sale (also an under the seat Pioneer active sub which was the icing on the cake but it was fine without it)...its not worth replacing just the speakers or the head unit without the other, neither is worth a light and will only frustrate more when linked to a good piece, i fitted the head unit first which showed just how awful the standard speakers are.

My inspiration came from this chap and his blog is well worth a peruse, click on the soundproofing link on the right of his page for the way it should be done, i didn't get quite this involved..:-) but his tips on interior removal etc were very handy for fitting the audio.

my107.blogspot.co.uk/

Edited by gordonbennet on 28/09/2013 at 10:27

it appears these are used to cover the entire floor or boot area. Is this how you used them?

Just realised i didn't actually answer this question, sorry Chris M.

Yes i fully lined the entire boot area, took out the spare wheel and side trims and covered all areas fully jigsaw like cutting round bolts holes, etc, same with the wheelarches covered them entirely inside and extended that coverage as far as possible under the seat and along the sill as practicable in order to lessin the sound creep, make holes in the pads as you go for any bolt or trims holes, dashed difficult to find them afterwards..:-)

There was a company called Interior Silent Travel which made soundproofing kits for most popular cars, I think in the 60s and 70s. No doubt they stopped when manufacturers put in their own - but I wonder if they're now making economies where they hope customers won't notice, so that there may be a need for kits again.

I had a Mercedes diesel B-class a few cars ago which was quite unacceptable in terms of noise: I had some soundproofing put on the underside of the bonnet, but it made little difference, and I think the engine noise was coming in through the bulkhead.

My MX-5 is noisy as hell, as you might imagine from a soft top. It has a good radio though, with a 'roof up' setting and a 'roof down' setting. The fun of driving it completely negates the noise, for me.

A layer of old carpet across the boot floor of a hatchback gives good bang for the buck. I did actually go as far as to put underlay beneath the carpets on one car (Golf). It made a big difference.

Yes i have used underlay before now and very effective it is too, but as far as i'm aware its not fire resistant and being rubberised i would suspect a nasty thing once alight..not as the rest of a car isn't. I don't know whats fire resistant or not in modern cars, but adding something known for noxious fumes wouldn't help...or is modern underlay fire resistant and i'm missing out on the very cheapest of insulators..

Corax, i forgot earlier sorry, thanks for the lin k to the foam site, serious range they carry, must admit a lot to choose from and i can't work out how much they work out at per sq metre unless i missed an obvious thing.

Bobbin, i suppose an MX5 is designed to be a seat of the pants driving experience, but i really can't stand excess road noise..

Edited by gordonbennet on 28/09/2013 at 19:08

Update.

Ordered item as per GB's recommendation above. £30 on a best offer plus £7.95 P&P. Arrived yesterday from Latvia.

Fitted to a C1 3 door. Three sheets inside each rear panel, two under the rear seat, three around the rear footwell, two and bit on each rear wheelarch and two along the rear panel. Ran out before I could do the boot floor & spare wheel well, but then I don't think they would have proved very durable as the foam would disintegrate. Instead, I cut a commercial quality carpet tile to fit the bottom of the well. A very straightforward job with the trim easily removed with no breakages. Took about 2 hours.

I'm very pleased with the result with a significant reduction in noise from the rear and in particular, tyre roar - a weak point on this model. Thanks for the tip GB.

So I had already treated the front doors on the Forester to some foam and it yielded fairly good results.

But after reading up a lot on the subject, I decided that the foam in the spare wheel well was just along for the ride and not contributing anything, so I ripped it out ( wasn't that easy being self adhesive). But I left the deadening pads in place.

I decided to remove the interior trim from the tailgate and sides of the boot, and deadened the now exposed outer panels with silent coat deadening pads. The tailgate in particular gives a really hollow resonating sound when rapped with the knuckles. What you want is a dull thud. I stuffed the tailgate aperture and hollow side boot openings with acoustic foam, and also deadened the plastic tailgate panel, before putting it all back together, The acoustic foam is supposed to stop noise reflection in hollow voids.

I drove the car and noticed some difference. The noise was lower, not so annoying, but I felt that there were other areas that needed improving. It's the sum of the parts that you do that add to the overall effect.

The piece de resistance for blocking road noise is mass loaded vinyl, because it's good at stopping low frequency road roar. The car related stuff is a bit pricy, so I went for stuff that is used between plasterboard in rooms called SBM5. Tecsound T50 seemed a good one too, but the former sold in smaller quantities and was cheaper. One thing about mlv is that it's very dense and heavy - 5kg per square metre, and is as good if not better at blocking noise than lead. So if you order some, make sure you get enough as carriage can be pricy. Price goes down the more you order. I ordered two rolls at 18 kg per roll.

If you are laying mlv on metal, you must use a thin layer of foam as a decoupling layer. Mlv works best as an isolated limp material. It can transmit the noise if not decoupled. It's also best as a single uninterrupted layer, but you will have to cut it slightly to allow fixings, wires through it.

Instead of messing about cutting it to fit the boot and spare wheel well, I just used the boot sections (you can pull them out as molded pieces of polystyrene that contain jack, tools e.t.c) as a template to cut a single piece of mlv to go over the top of the boot floor. I didn't have to use foam this way because the floor was the decoupling layer.

The other area that looked suspect was under the rear seat. Apart from some Subaru deadening pads there is no soundproofing, just bare metal. I took the rear seat base out, laid foam over the area up to the boot floor, and covered this with mlv, cutting and shaping to make it fit. It took a bit of persuation to get the seat back, but it went back OK.

None of the products I used this time were self adhesive. If you make a mistake, it's a pain to remove, and the mlv holds everything in place anyway.

I put everything back and drove the car. The results I have to say are pretty fab. It's now quiet enough for me to pinpoint where the noise is mainly coming from, and that's the rear doors, which I haven't treated yet. And the front doors will be done again using mlv as I feel this could be improved. I reckon that will be good enough for me, as I don't think much noise is coming from the floor, although I might change my mind when the doors are done!

The added bonus is that the ride quality has improved, with what must be around 12 kilo's (I used two thirds of a roll of mlv) spread evenly over the rear suspension.

Don't use this if you want to keep your car light ;)

The Forester really is a noisy car in terms of road noise, but this latest mod has really made it much more of a pleasure to drive.

Edited by corax on 14/05/2015 at 18:43

To be honest gb it wasn't too bad to do. The worst bit is taking out the trim, and making sure you don't break the clips, but I have to say I'm impressed with the Subaru ones, very strong, and I only broke one - that was down to my own ham fistedness. It can be a bit intimidating seeing all these bits of plastic dotted around the car and wondering whether it will all go back, but again, the Forester is lovely - like a big mechano set.

This website is great for info about soundproofing

www.sounddeadenershowdown.com/home

No problems and it's all I hoped to expect in terms of reliability. I wouldn't do this work if I didn't think it was worth it, but it honestly feels a very solid car, mechanically and bodily.

The other thing I'm sorting out is the seats which I find a bit uncomfortable, so I've bought some Impreza WRX ones from Ebay. They bolt in, but sit much lower, so I will be seeing a car upholstery man soon to see what he can do regarding the runners. The drivers one could do with refoaming too.

Those Landcruisers have really got under your skin and I can see the appeal. I won't be soundproofing the bulkhead of mine either. Call me strange but I like the sound of the transmission whirring under my feet :)

The Outback we have continues to perform well, that didn't need any extra proofing, nor it must be said does the Landcruiser i bought in Jan or Feb this year which i've fully rustproofed this week...though i now have to decide whether to LPG convert it or give it three years or so with me on petrol alone and then replace it with a grey import late as possible 70 series again...the 90 i have now features the 3.4 V6 petrol which sounds glorious so if anything some bulkhead proofing needs removing..:-)

It seems the weather stayed good for you then GB.