VW Camper soundproofing – project quiet shh part one

How we made our campervan a little quieter

VW did not really spend much time or money making the Split Screen Camper quiet from the factory. Their efforts extended to some thick rubber mats up front and in the middle and then in the most important areas they splashed out on some thin strips of ‘material’ above the engine at the back of the bus with a loading mat on top. Not quite up to modern day standards and definitely not enough to have a conversation in the front of the Bus without shouting.

Sound inside a Bus is unavoidable due to the air cooled nature of the engine and the lack of technical vibration damping engine mounting rubbers. Hence all we can do is reduce this noise pollution and so for a VW Camper the first step means stopping those big long panels from resonating with the engine noise. To achieve this we need to use a vibration damping material – there are several on the market. We chose a thick aluminium backed with a thick layer of bitumen type sticky or rubbery material on the side facing the noise.

Here we can see the stuff we used – the heavy roll on the rear shelf, we used an industrial pair of scissors to cut the various shapes we needed, cleaned the surface with degreaser, peeled off the backing and applied the sheet, then used the wooden roller to get the sheet really stuck to the fresh painted surface;

This is a good shot of the area underneath the rear seat of a VW Camper – here you can see the factory seatbelt points and where we attached the lap belts. Its easier with a painted surface to stick the soundproof to;

Here we can see the rear seat area covered with the vibration dampener – we chose to cut out around all those intricate little details. You can see the heavy sound absorber mat laid in place over the rear luggage area;

This is a view looking forward into the cargo area – this VW Camper is to be used for seating and moving children around. The contact cement in the foreground is used to glue the heavy mat to the vibration damper;

The long lengths to the floor of the cargo area quickly used up the roll of vibration mat we had but once we started there was no going back. After application we had to go back and cut through to the seatbelt points and the seat attachment points.

And the finished application of vibration dampener and sound absorber in our VW Camper, in all about one days work to get all the details right – the trickiest is to cut out around the seat belts and over the complex shaped areas;