Not much work the way I did it. It’s still messy, but I probably spent all of 45 minutes doing the whole job.
That’s why I mentioned it’s great if your body is already separated from the other junk, but mine’s all assembled so I just took a little time and sprayed it where I could.
I did make a mistake though, in that since I was in a rush to do it in a small open window of time that I had, I forgot to lay some plastic or cardboard over the exhaust tubing! Yes, it smells pretty bad when it’s burning.
Rather than lay cardboard or plastic down on the driveway, because I knew it would probably get a little messy, I parked on the street where a little spotting of rubber and tar would be mostly hidden if it dripped. Glad I wore gloves and glasses.
Should’ve worn coveralls though…
I used three different brands, so I can’t really say that one is better at sound deadening than the other, or if one is a thermal barrier and another is not. But they all three sprayed differently.
I had an old can of Bondo brand and sprayed easily and smoothly more like paint than undercoating. Very little mess.
I recently bought a Rustoleum can because in the text it said good for sound deadening. It sprayed on with more texture, but not quite as thick as I remember under coating being 30 years ago.
More recently I bought three cans of Boom Mat brand specifically, as you can imagine, because of the name and what it claims to be. It probably is the best of the three, but is also by far the messiest to do on your back to an already assembled vehicle. very liquidy and splatters a lot, and also builds up around the nozzle so if you don’t have gloves on your hands will be black.
Driving it again today extensively I would have to say I probably dropped about 25% in temperature through the floor and 50% of sound transmission.
My front floors are mostly bare with just the remnants of an old one piece floor mat remaining. The entire interior is done in rhino (sorry, Raptor) liner color matched to the body. It’s a great covering, but in spite of its mass does not dampen sound very effectively. Very surprising in fact. Either that or it would be unbelievably loud without it!
Soon I will have another layer of protection in the form of an underlayment of insulation along with either the full coverage sport mat or carpet.
If I was doing it to a body without all the stuff, I would probably use a higher end product such as lizard skin. Or like some do, make their own.
I’ve been a proponent of theirs for years and from all reports it seems to work as advertised. Works out to be quite a bit more expensive than just buying 10 cans of undercoating, but I would have to believe that their product is also way more effective.
