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Hello welcome to my web site! If you're looking to pictoral DIY instructions on mounting sound dampers for your Toyota Prius or any vehicle in general you've come to the right place! I have a 2006 Prius and I named it EcoBunny because it is so cute! It's definitely more noisy than my other cars so I decided to put the sound dampers.
I bought the complete Dynamat Extreme and have been very pleased with the results. The tools you'll need are really simple, but make sure your work place is large enough and that you're not wearing nice clothes-- the black sticky goos on the sound dampers are almost impossible to get rid of. You should do this in a cool place (50-70F) or else the goos will go everywhere and make your workplace a total mess. |
| Taking apart your Prius is quite simple but it does take a lot of time. I recommend working on the rear doors first because they're much simpler. The first thing you need to do is to take out the screws on the door handle. |
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| After you take out the screw and the plastic holder on the door handle,, you should see something like this. |
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Next, take out the plastic cover on the door latch. You can use a skinny flat head screw driver. You simply pry it out, gently, then take out the screw as shown below. |
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IMPORTANT: DO NOT DO THIS!
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IMPORTANT: DO NOT DO THIS!
This plastic part is attached to the door panel and taking it out is NOT NECESSARY. If you do this, you'll have to glue it back. It's a waste of time. Don't do this.
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You've taken out all the screws. Now it's time to pry out the inner pastic/composite door panel from the metal door. They are joined by a couple of plastic snap joints, so pry out each joint slowly and carefully. You'll need to apply considerable force to pry them out. You'll hear a loud "pop" sound for each joint you take apart. Note that you can either leave the wires around, or detach them completely. I detached them so that I can work around the door easily. |
| Now that you've taken the plastic/composite door panel from the metal door, you're ready to take out the clear plastic cover which is glued by a tar-like substance similar to the car damper. The clear plastic protects the inner door from contaminants. Carefully cut the tar, when the temperature is cold. If the temperature is above 70F, it's difficult to cut the tar because it'll be extremely sticky and you'll make a total mess! So make sure the temperature is low when doing this.
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Take out the metal piece that holds the door handle (for rear door). |
| Detaching wires carefully so that you have more room to work with (picture is front door). |
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(picture of the rear door) |
You'll notice that the metal door has two sides, one exterior and one interior. You now have a few choices-- you can apply the dampers on the exterior side, interior side, or both. For the front door, I only did the exterior side because interior is full of wires that's hard to do. For the back door, I did both sides. |
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This is a picture with dampers installed on the inside. I used several pieces because smaller piecer are much easier to deal with. Now they're on the car, use a heat gun or a hot blow dryer to make sure they apply tightly. Don't use too much force or else you'll dent your car! Make sure to use a nice, small roller for this job. |
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This is an example of the rear door, with dampers on both sides of the door. |
That's it! I'm very very happy with the results.
I'm not the most mechanically inclined girl but I actually did it and it was very easy!
My EcoBunny is now pretty quiet on the road and it hops well without excess noise. As you can see above I made a few mistakes because I was not well informed. Hopefully these pictures have been helpful for you, because they would have made my life much easier! Good luck sound dampening your car!
Lastly, if you made a mess from the black sticky goos (tar), you need the right chemical to disolve them. Use baby oil. Good luck! :)
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