osinrider04

Hey guys,

I don't post much in the forums but I thought that I would make something for others to hopefully search/google and find useful. To make a long storyshort, my windshield in my 2000 XJ has been leaking (without me knowing frome xactly where), it ruined my headliner, and subsequently caused terrible floor pan rust under the carpet.

After realizing that my carpet needed to come up, I gutted the entire cabin down to the metal. I'm having an autobody shop redo the floor pans since I'm not a welder and I don't believe rivets and glue are worth my time. I've purchased 100 sq ft of FatMat's Mega Mat that will line the entire floor, roof, doors, and rear hatch. I have also picked up 2 gallons of Herculiner...you can see where this is going.

I have done a lot of searching throughout all the forums I'm on and did not find much advice on this topic. This weekend I will be putting the sound deadener Mega Mat throughout the vehicle. I will then lightly prep the surface of the Mega Mat and apply Herculiner directly on top. The goal is to create a cabin that is quiet, heat shielded, and water/dirt resistant. According to FatMat, Mega Mat is a paintable surface and can have bedliners put directly on them. In addition, FatMat claims that the material used in Mega Mat is not too soft where a bedliner would be cracking from pressure on the surface due to the moldability of the sound deadener. We shall see.

I am also going to be doing the entire headliner in Herculiner. I've removed the "fabric" and "glue" from my POS headliner down to the fiberglass. It will be prepped and had the Herc applied directly to the existing fiberglass board.

This thread is to hopefully answer the question of whether no carpet withsound deadener is a good combo. This vehicle is my DD at the moment so I am looking forward to the results. I'll post back in the next week or two withpictures and updates.

PS-I am not and do not know any vendors or have any relation to any products I'm using in this mod. I've chosen my products based off of reviews, price, and ease of use.

-Ben

torque062

Sweet. There's a good chance I'll be doing this soon if everything goes well for you. I've also been researching a ton about doing almost the exact same, except using Monstaliner.

osinrider04

I got the headliner done yesterday and I think it looks pretty good. It definitely looks industrial to me versus using something that comes out of a spray paint can. So if the look you are going for is clean and smooth, this definitely isn't what you want. However, I wanted the ability to have my mountain bike tires hit the roof and me not care.

I'm also considering painting all of my interior trim in the herculiner as well. The stuff is all beat to crap and its a nasty tan color so I might as well. I'm gonna do some more research as to how nice it can stick to the plastic pieces first.

I should have the jeep back by Sat afternoon and I'll start doing the Mega Mat as soon as I get it. I'm going to take some short video clips of me driving with no carpet or headliner in, and then also in stages as I complete the floor, roof, and doors with the Mega Mat so you can hopefully hear how the different areas impact sounds. My tires are crap and need to be replaced so it will be a good test for how well it works with tire noise.

osinrider04

Sorry this thread is taking forever. I am not happy with the floor pan repair job that I received so I'm dealing with that. However, I have started taking off the lower trim panels and prepping the areas for the fat mat. It's ridiculous how thin the metal is on the XJ. I did the passenger side door last night and it definitely has a different tone now when the door is closed. It's hard to say what difference it has made since I don't have the other areas of the car fat mat'ed, but when knocking on the metal from outside the car, the non fat mat areas sound literally like a tin can and the new door sounds like a tin can filled with water (as in it sounds dense).

I did the rear cargo floor and behind the driver's seat as well. I don't see why herculiner or monstaliner would not be able to go directly over top of this. There is barely any give in the fat mat to where herculiner would be cracking. @Torque062, if you are still going this route, the only thing I might do is apply an additional coat or two to the areas where you will have heat foot traffic or cargo gear. I really doubt that it will crack/split but just to be safe. I'm also going roughing up the top of the fat mat so that the herculiner has something better to stick to.

I went to home depot and bought some expandable foam insullator as well (srapy can, like $5). The roof of the xj and the cross support that the headliner attachs to has a 1" gap between them. It looks like the factory provided some foam in there but mine has deteriorated and no longer is really doing anything. I'm going to remove the old foam and replace it properly.

spy1988

Do you have any pictures of the headliner before herculiner? I will be working on a similar idea only I was thinking the fatmat underneath the headliner. Your liner came out amazing btw.

torque062

Alright. I ended up getting some thermo-cool stuff from summit. I'm going to start on it tonight but I'm not sure how far I'll get. I've got a 4x4 group that's doing an 8 hour trip tomorrow that I'll probably join in on.

I'm also wondering if anybody has recommendations on something that would work for the exterior of the vehicle. I'd like to shield the radiant heat of the firewall, tunnel, and passenger floor. Low speeds in the desert summer can really cook a guy..

osinrider04

Here is a picture of me working on the headliner before bed lining it. I used a steel wire brush that you can see in the picture. Bought it from advanced auto parts for a few bucks. It took me less than an hour to scrape all the old glue off. Would have been faster but since I knew I was painting it, I over prepped it.

I'm also doing fatmat under the head liner too. You'll spend more money on 3M glue and new fabric than you will for bed liner, and the bed liner will never sag ;-)

osinrider04

I haven't researched anything that is for the exterior of the vehicle, but I do know that some of these companies like fat mat, dynamat, second skin, etc, sometimes sell a product that is meant for insulation instead of sound dampening. Someone did send me a link to a product called EZ Cool (http://lobucrod.com/) that might work?

These are all products that inside the vehicle but I don't see why it wouldn't work just the same. I am definitely planning to put 3 layers of mega mat on my firewall and tunnel though, as that is where I hear most sound coming from on my jeep.

osinrider04

*Update*

I was out of town this weekend but I did manage to get some more mega mat down. I don't know if it's just me and my lack of time, but it is taking me forever to get it applied to the entire jeep. So far I've done the 2 front doors, the rear cargo floor, and 1/3 of the roof in the rear. I've also sprayed that expanding foam which turned out to be an awesome idea.

I downloaded a decibel reader on my phone (that said it was tuned up to 100db for my particular phone). On the highway at 60mph my XJ was at 81db. Considering I've only done half the car and not really any of the loudest areas with mega mat, I think it's doing it's job so far. I rode in my friends Chevy Cobalt over the weekend and his car was in the low 70s (completely stock car).

I have no idea what anyone's Jeep on here is at decibel wise, but I'd be curious for some comparisons.

spy1988

Are you sticking the fat mat to the headliner itself or the roof? I feel like it would serve more purpose on the roof itself.

osinrider04

It's going directly on the metal roof of the jeep. I should have clarified that. The headliner will go over top of the fat mat, but the two will not be stuck together. I don't think the fatmat would do anything if it was stuck to the headliner itself either.

spy1988

That's what I was thinking. Your doing good work with this. In to see what you come up with for the rear quarter panel area if anything at all. I feel like I can hear a lot from that one area.

osinrider04

Do you mean the area where the rear wheel well is? For example, I've take the trim off where that small cubby space is. Behind there is a ton of open space. You can actually find the top side of the wheel well that is not exposed from the trunk area. You can also reach all the way down to the quarter panel. That whole area sounded hollow. It goes so far that I actually had to get my gf to reach in there with her tiny arms to fully reach the end over top of the wheel well.

My xj seemed to have a literal bag of sound deadening carpet type crap just stuck down in there. It was about 6"x5" gray bag--what a joke. I just threw it out because I couldn't even think of it serving any purposes. I have also come across a lot of places where water has been entering and causing [surface] rust at the moment. My trim was removed from outside the vehicle for new bumpers and fender trimming and those tiny holes have apparently been letting water inside. I'm plugging up everything as I go. I need to do some more research on insulating those hollow spaces. I really liked the results I got from the expanding foam on the roof and around the top of the windshield, so I'm thinking of finding something similar that is not water absorbing and filling those entire spaces with the foam once the fatmat has been applied. I don't see the need for the space in my life and I'd rather fill it with something dense and lightweight that may help with vibration.

I really don't see any problems with putting bed liner down though. In all the areas I've put fat mat down, the sheet metal underneath is not something that bends at all where the bed liner would be cracking at all. The only thing that bothers me is how wrinkles occur when laying the fatmat. It's impossible in some areas to not cause wrinkles, like going around body curves. I guess I will have to apply the bedliner strategically over these areas because I want as flat a surface as possible for cleaning purposes.

This weekend I should be applying the first coat of bedliner to the fatmat.

osinrider04

I made some decent progress with the herculiner this weekend. I finished the fat mat from the rear seats and back (still waiting for my floor pans to be re-fixed by the noobs that repaired it last time). Fat Mat, and probably the other sound deadeners as well, come with a high shine aluminum foil top. I took the pad that my herculiner kit came with that is used to scrape the finish from truck beds and sanded down the fat mat. This way the herculiner had a better surface to adhere to. It must have taken about an hour to hand sand the entire interior of the soon to be painted surfaces. I then recleaned the fat mat and made sure there were no particles that I would be painting over. Like everyone always says, the better you prep the easier the job will be. I wouldn't skimp on sanding the fat mat because you don't want this bed liner to peal up in a few weeks after all your work of laying the fat mat down.

So far it has turned out awesome. The bedliner has cured for about 2 days and it is already rock hard. The only con that I can see so far, which was expected, is seeing the wrinkles of the fat mat underneath. This only bothers me for cleaning purposes. I am going to apply more herculiner over the areas where the fat mat had been layered or wrinkled. The idea is to build up layers of bedliner to smooth out the surface.

Like I mentioned, I do not have the driver or passenger side floors finished to see how well it will withstand foot track. However, I've been putting tools and other things in my cargo area where I do have the fatmat and herculiner and there are no signs of issues. I found one area where my fatmat had developed a bubble (under the rear seats). It was probably about 1 inch thick and I was able to depress the bubble and the herculiner didn't even crack. So this leaves me to believe that the bedliner is actually quite flexible actually.

osinrider04

I'll post some more final pics up in a little bit.