- Wheel wells (inside or "outside")
- Floors
- Doors
- Firewall
All of these things are fine, and I've done some or all of them on all of the Volvos I've had, and helped a couple of friends do their doors, etc. Still, I've always thought that there had to be more I could do - i.e. I never thought I got any significant gain beyond doors and trunk space/trunk lid or rear door. So when I found myself with 4 sheets of Gladen Aero-Butyl, 1 sheet of the foam with silver backing stuff and 4 black, light foam sheets (all of them about 1 inch thick) after doing all doors and the trunk space, I had to make a tough decision.
What's the overall largest, thinnest, most "resonancy" area of these lovely speedwagons of ours?
Roof.
So researching around didn't get me much - most people who do some sort of sound deadening on these cars might mention the roof in passing, but I've yet to see anyone actually do much about it. And really, it's no wonder - removing the headliner? Sounds risky. Sounds difficult, too. But... I decided to do it.
Since I had very limited time to actually do this, I didn't get any pictures, but I thought I should post something about it here anyway.
After a little research on headliner removal, I almost chickened out, but put my foot down and told myself to quit being a... well... you know what. So, today, I sound deadened and insulated the roof area of my 855 with the rest of my materials.
Removing the headliner was far from the PITA some say it is.
- Interior lights out,
- mirrors out,
- "oh shit-bars" out, all from front to back:
about 15 minutes.
Trim: another 20 minutes,
That was mostly because I had never had all of that stuff out before, and wanted to preserve as many clips and fasteners as possible. Success, with only one plastic thingy coming apart - most likely it was failing from a previous removal when the last owner put yards and yards of a mysterious antenna cable around the car...
The headliner itself, after all the handle bars and lights and trim is out, hangs on 2 sturdy velcro squares. Pull gently out of the rear of the wagon, w/o bending or breaking it. Another success.
Removing the headliner from the car took me about 45 minutes, being careful and considerate throughout.
I then cut up the 3,5-ish sheets of Dynabel Aero-Butyl into suitable pieces and distributed around (and some on top of) the rock hard factory sound deadening that was there. To be fair, there are 4 large sheets of it on there, but as that was, like I said, rock hard, it doesn't do much good.
After that, I stuffed insulation everywhere it would go. Inside pillars and beams (there are holes everywhere - little rumble-speakers each and every one of them) and placed 2 large sheets over the front seat area, one in the middle above the rear seat area, and one smaller sheet (the remainder of what I had) over the third area, almost in the trunk area.
Putting stuff back on took me longer than taking it off, but that's what I expected. I spent the absolute majority of my time placing the sound deadening and getting pieces as large as I could to fit in all the nooks and crannies.
Took the car for a drive afterwards, and that drive is the reason for this post. It was the single best thing I have ever done to lower the noise in any of my 850s and including the S70 I had. Resonance from the roof is way down, road and air noise is way down, and the whole thing had me slack-jawed from test drive start to finish.
So...this whole thing, just to say that if you want to lower the noise levels in your 850 or V70, do the doors and wheel wells and all of that, but for crying out loud - do the roof as well!!
- S
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