I've heard of people deadening their kicks with modeling clay. My question is....if I used enough, and possibly mixed it with a small amount of bondo hardener, would I be able to deaden the van's floor with the clay as a cheap solution to Dynamat/Cascade/Brown Bread.

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It would not be cheaper. It would be close to the same, plus messier, plus way heavier. Also hard to get your parts to fit back together and get an even thickness. Also you would end up spending alot of time compared to real deadening.

The modeling clay will be particularly effective at lowish freq (>100 Hz) but will absorb all frequencies till it becomes a little reflective at HF... this depends on the density of the clay and whether it is non hardening (I don’t think anyone is using clay that hardens). The clay will be pushed around a bit at the lower freq… I think that is what happened to my project. I just tried it and it didn’t do too well for me (but it was fun and messy to work with it was like being 7 years old again!)
Mixing the clay with the bondo will give you a partially hard, partially soft mess... but if you are lucky and I mean lucky, it could work , but would it be effective?

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I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce.

Hmmm, I don't see how it would be quite as expensive as Dynamat or whatever.

You could probably pick up enough bricks of clay to deaden the floor for like 25 bucks at an arts and crafts store.

What I wanna get rid of, is any noises that will affect the sound while going down the road...I won't be competing in the SQ portion of IASCA untill I finish the Cavalier but I would like to have a fairly dead vehicle and since the floor is the biggest,flat, surface on the van, I figured I'd start there. If it works ok then I may use it on my doors and possibly the fire wall. Since it would have to go on as a liquid, I would use regular deadening on the roof.

The other thing I meant to ask is this, would the clay be more effective if I used a layer of tin-foil or some kind of covering like regular Dynamat uses, painted black as to avoid reflections? Not that it matters much once the carpet covers it.

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http://www.sounddomain.com/ride/634352

The rest of the install pics.

Floral clay works the best, its $2.87 USD a pound! And it takes 7-10 pounds to full deaden pods. I need heard of modeling clay before, does it never dry out?

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Since I'm one of the people using modeling clay, let me enlighten everyone on the subject.

The good stuff is messy, and heavy, and no you can't combine bondo with it. As far as cost goes, I think it would be just as expesive, maybe even more so than B-quiet for example.

Most sound deadening relies on mass loading to achieve the desired effect, and to some degree material stiffness. To get the desired effect, I'd say at least a 1/2" layer would be required. So if you've got any trim panels....good luck fitting them back on like Dereck said.

If you want to deaden the van floor on the cheap, get an old piece of thick carpet and flip it upside down. It will be far easier to install, and if you don't like it you can always take it back to the dump where you found it.

Adam

There is also a rubber type compound that you can pour and it hardens into a gym floor type consistency. I guess a few competitors are using it. It will be very expensive compared to mat and alot of prep involved. But it would probably work better than clay over the whole floor.

^^^SSSHHHHH....don't spill the beans on Mark E's truck.

Take a 5gallon pail of ribreglass resin. Add 2kg of chopped matte and washed sand as desired until you get a heavy cement consistency. Add 200ml of hardener, pour and trowel. Let sit for 3-4 hours.
People have actually done this. I hear it's a little messy but works [img]graemlins/dunno.gif[/img]

Could just go for quickset concrete too but it has poor strength and you would wind up with a floor of gravel after a year if it is laid too thin.

How about a layer of undercarpet padding, and then a layer of vinyl flooring, all contact cemented together?