mordick

Toyota/Lexus have quite thin metal, so doors have vibration when you are listening music and they are very light... so I don't like it.
I decided to make extra sound insulation and get rid of vibration of metal on doors.

Materials used for extra sound insulation:
1. Vibrodamping mats - 4sqm. 390 х 250mm sheet
2. Sound absorber material. 2x 1000x600mm 15mm thickness/ 2x 1000x600mm 35mm thickness

mordick

Take off door panels on toyota/lexus is very easy. Later I will make post here how to do it. Need to make photo of door first to show where the screws are.

So when you remove door panel, you will see that (pic1)

Now remove this polyethylene cover and you can throw it out, you won't need it in the future for lexus

After removing this "plastic bag" you will see inside side of door. So on this side you need to stick vibrodamping mats. (pic2)

They have glue side, so there won't be any problems to stick them on door.
Notice that mats sticks edge to edge. If you need, you can cut mats as you want.

Better if you will use construction dryer for mats(when they already sticked). It will helps better stick them together (pic3) Notice: make sure that temperature of heating is ok(don't heat a lot), so you won't damage outside paint on door)

P.S.: Sorry for my English, trying my best

mordick

So when we stick mats on inside door side, it will looks like this:

mordick

After that sticking mats on outer side of door. I saved some material here (pic1, pic2), you can cover more area. For example like I did on my ex Toyota LC120 (pic3).

Please notice, not to stick material where the door panel clips will fit.

mordick

Now about door panel and sound absorber material.
We need it for more silence, by mainly to get rid of crickets.

So originally inside side of panel looks like that (pic1)

Removing this stock insulation material, and sticking sound absorber instead of stock insulation. (pic2)

After mounting everything back and finally we have doors without any vibration on metal and silence!
And of course now every door became heavier for ~3kgs. So now doors much nicely opens/closes and souds much better when you open/close them. S-class will be jealous


How I already said, my English are not very good. So if somebody didn' t understand my scribble, please ask. I will try to rephrase.

I hope for somebody my experience will be helpfull.

Super Blue

Looks good, how much quieter is it when you drive now?

Whitigir

Look like twice the insulation from stock

tfischer

Your English is fine and the photos are extremely helpful.
Thanks for the information.

Clutchless

Thank you for the great photos. I have done this on a couple of cars and planned to do the RX this Summer. The product I have used is Ramat by http://www.raamaudio.com/

They make both a deadener, similar to the vibro pads described above and foam for sound insulation. I have a comment about the deadener. You do not need to cover the entire door panel, It works by deadening vibrations. Just adding more, a few pieces around the door, will get you almost the same gains by reducing vibration. I recommend some deadener behind the speaker with a piece of foam on top to absorb sound.

mordick

It's much quieter if you are standing for example in traffic gam. Door insulation helps to keep all side noises from street.
Ideal is to make extra insulation on floor also, eslecially rear side of car. But i'm not planning to make it on RX at the moment. On my ex-car I did it. It gives good result.

All costs is:
90 USD - 4sqm vibrodamping mats.
60 USD - sound absorber material.

In your regions materials will be cheaper.

It tooks 4 hours to make insulation for doors.

mordick

In my country we don't have a lot theese products on market. So choose what we have.

corradoMR2

Excellent writeup, now if only I had the guts to take the doors apart...

mordick

Lexus - not BMW. Door panels removes by themselves
Seriously, it takes ~5min to take off the door panel on toyota/lexus.

A bit later I will write here how to remove door panels. Also will make pictures

Clutchless

Removing door panels is not difficult and if you have already done a few cars, they are all very similar, especially Japanese vehicles. Now that Mini Cooper was another story....Once the panel is off they all look about the same. To remove usually there are a couple of screws, mostly around the handles, maybe under a plastic cover piece. Then you may have to work the triim loose around the door handle. Then there are a bunch of plastic snap tabs holding the inner panel to the frame, these you cannot see but you yank loose by pulling on the door panel working your way around the edge. Once loose you have to be careful of the wires to the door and window switches and speakers. They can be removed but the connectors vary, some you push in a tab, some you pull a tab. I have the service manual CD somewhere around the house...Also the Raamat site has many how to instructions that are very useful.