Making a clanky old van sound like new

[mmwain]

My 08 Dispatch (or Expert!) sounded like an 08 van. On close inspection I found that someone had left lots of stuff hanging loose in the engine bay after doing a job on the injectors. Lots of zip ties, doing up clips, putting in missing fasteners etc sorted that. Also a few things are rubber mounted but have developed movement over the years, generally some sealant or a zip tie sorts that. The centre reinforcing bars in the doors and along the body are bonded to the skin and virtually every single one had become disbonded allowing the body panels to vibrate against them. This seems inconsequential but squirting loads of silicone sealant in to rebond them all made the biggest difference of all the things I've done! Takes a while to get all the trim off and back on obviously.
I got some free carpet from the skip behind a carpet shop and did the floors. I used 10mm expanding body panel fasteners in the cabin directly into the plastic floor liner to stop it rucking up. As well as making it quieter it also covered the horrible holes worn in the plastic floor.
I went round the cabin replacing loose and missing fasteners and squirting clear silicone into all loose/rattling gaps in the trim.
I cut more pieces of carpet and glued them into the body panel recesses and bulkhead in the rear, this reduces the sound reverberating around in there. The bulkhead made quite a lot of noise when cornering so I put in more fasteners to stop it moving.
Finally I went around the bottom and fixed all the loose trim with new fasteners or zip ties joining holes I drilled in places where they are not visible.
You could do all this in a day. My van is now much quieter and much better to drive in comparison to when I got it. I didn't do it in a day and only started using my DB meter half way through but am pretty sure it's around 10DB quieter now and much better for my long term hearing. I don't think many people are aware that the legal limit for noise in the workplace is 70something DB and in a van it's typically 90-100DB, most of which is low frequency road noise you can't do much about. That's not very irritating but still damages your ears. Most of the fixes I've done take out the irritating high frequency bangs and vibrations, it's the carpeting that helps reduce the low frequency stuff. Engine noise makes virtually no difference at all to the DB level. We did some tests on the (empty) motorway with the meter and putting the clutch in and letting the engine go to idle at 70mph has almost no effect on the reading, it's all about the surface and your tyres.

[CitroJim]

Excellent work

[MattBLancs]

This is sort of job that makes me "happy and sad at the same time"

Happy that simple things are making such meaningful improvements to (performance or in this case) comfort

But a little sad that half the fixed are just completing someone else's half hearted job!

[Jay-Bruce]

Good work mate, just a FYI, Flashband is a very cheap roofing product that's great for reducing noise from vehicles, could be a thought for further reductions?