Recommend sound deadening material and auto shop

You can DIY using dynamat or cheaper alternatives like KILMAT which is about $90 for 36 sq-ft.

Dynamat is the go to product for sound deadening. Not cheap though, but there are similar products like Kilmat https://www.amazon.com/Kilmat-Deadening ... 0751CBXBT/
Youl'll want it applied to your wheel wells, cabin floor, door skins, roof skin. Even your hood and firewall if your getting engine noise.
There might be some acoustic plastic sheet you can lay on your windows.
Doesn't seem worth it to do on a Civic. Might be better to just buy a more quiet luxury car. But I can understand why you'd want it. It just won't ever be as quiet as a Tesla or S-class.
For pure road noise, you'll want to get the quietest tires you can, like the ones used on EVs with foam inside. Changing tires would be the easiest and give you some of the biggest gains in sound reduction. Dynamating the wheel well is also easy. Carpet style mats can also be used.
Chances are you have wind noise, so reducing that would normally be done with thicker laminated glass, but that's not a reasonable upgrade.
Doing any interior dynamatting is going to cost you a lot for dissembling the interior.
If you go all out, you could be looking at $2k+ with Kilmat, more for Dynamat.
Just wheel wells could be a in the hundreds of dollars.
Normally something like this would be a passion project done as a DIY.
Of course, the cheapest option is ear plugs or headphones.

Best is to target where the noise is coming from. In most cars, most of the noise is from the tires. At highway speeds, it's mostly wind noise. If you get new tires, make sure you have a good alignment with near zero toe in.

There's actually a lot that goes into sound deadening than just the popular Dynamat or the many knock-offs.

Sound deadening basically falls into the following areas:

1. Stopping vibration of the materials like door skins by adding a weighed material that changes how much energy that is required to make something vibrate. Dynamat (and the knock offs) are such a material. Dynamat doesn't do much for anything else.
2. Stopping sound noise from travelling through empty space. Using something like carpet underlayment (get the sound deadening type for most reduction) does wonders for this. You can install it between the door's plastic trim and the metal skin. Won't do anything for vibrations however.
3. Another method is to use a weighted sheet of material like mass loaded vinyl in the doors as well.

The cheapest way to do it would be use point 2 AND some heavy duty car mats like the all weather ones made out of rubber as the underlayment will cost you next to nothing to buy (some places may actually give you the cut ends for free) and the car mats you can take with you. In Just used the underlayment to line the bottom of the trunk under the spare as well.

Honestly for a Honda Civic this isn’t going to be worth it.

You’ll need to rip out virtually all interior coverings which is a LOT of labour.

Either trade in or sell for something quieter, or live with it. This assumes you don’t have a really noisy set of tires. Don’t replace them if they’re a bit noisy as it isn’t worth it. But If they’re howling then replace.

I’d find a reasonably priced Accord of the same year and test drive it. Then buy that if it meets your needs. If not maybe look at a cheaper model of Lexus.

BHA1 wrote: ↑ Honestly for a Honda Civic this isn’t going to be worth it.

You’ll need to rip out virtually all interior coverings which is a LOT of labour.

Either trade in or sell for something quieter, or live with it. This assumes you don’t have a really noisy set of tires. Don’t replace them if they’re a bit noisy as it isn’t worth it. But If they’re howling then replace.

I’d find a reasonably priced Accord of the same year and test drive it. Then buy that if it meets your needs. If not maybe look at a cheaper model of Lexus.

It really depends on how far you want to go. If you want to place something like Dynamat all over the place, yes, the cost is very high. According to one study I saw, only 25% coverage is needed to achieve good vibration reductions using Dynamat by correctly placing the Dynamat at ideal locations (ie in the middle of large panels where it vibrates the most and away from corners and bends which tend to have lower vibrations).

However, good results can be had by just DIYing the following:

1. Remove door cards.
2. Stick some Dynamat in those ideal locations on the back of the door cards so they won't vibrate. If you have door speakers, place a bit extra around those speaker openings to cut down on vibrations caused by the speaker.
3. Cut and fit closed cell foam (ie carpet underlayment) into cavities of the door card to reduce the transfer of sound noise from the outside to the inside.
4. Avoid sticking any Dynamat on the metal skin as the closed-cell foam will cut out most of the noise coming from skin vibrations.
5. Reinstall door cards.

Using the steps above, do the same for any plastic interior trim pieces and the trunk/hatch. For bonus marks, slip a piece of closed-cell foam between the roof liner and the roof.

A nice side benefit of using closed cell foam over Dynamat besides the cost and the ease of installation is the thermal insulating properties you get. The interior's temperature will be much more even as there is typically very little if any insulation in the car.

craftsman wrote: ↑ It really depends on how far you want to go. If you want to place something like Dynamat all over the place, yes, the cost is very high. According to one study I saw, only 25% coverage is needed to achieve good vibration reductions using Dynamat by correctly placing the Dynamat at ideal locations (ie in the middle of large panels where it vibrates the most and away from corners and bends which tend to have lower vibrations).

However, good results can be had by just DIYing the following:

1. Remove door cards.
2. Stick some Dynamat in those ideal locations on the back of the door cards so they won't vibrate. If you have door speakers, place a bit extra around those speaker openings to cut down on vibrations caused by the speaker.
3. Cut and fit closed cell foam (ie carpet underlayment) into cavities of the door card to reduce the transfer of sound noise from the outside to the inside.
4. Avoid sticking any Dynamat on the metal skin as the closed-cell foam will cut out most of the noise coming from skin vibrations.
5. Reinstall door cards.

Using the steps above, do the same for any plastic interior trim pieces and the trunk/hatch. For bonus marks, slip a piece of closed-cell foam between the roof liner and the roof.

A nice side benefit of using closed cell foam over Dynamat besides the cost and the ease of installation is the thermal insulating properties you get. The interior's temperature will be much more even as there is typically very little if any insulation in the car.

1. What should be the priority? Floor, doors or wheel wells?
2. How closed foam cell (carpet underlay) sticks to inside of door metal? use glue or double sided tape?

The 10th gen Civic got pretty bad tires from Firestone. The road noise will be significantly reduced by getting better tires from top brands. My winter Pirelli is quieter than the crappy Firestone

xcel wrote: ↑ 1. What should be the priority? Floor, doors or wheel wells?
2. How closed foam cell (carpet underlay) sticks to inside of door metal? use glue or double sided tape?

The easiest location first I always say as it gives you some experience in doing the work before tackling the hard bits. Therefore, I would actually start in the trunk as you can remove the spare and just line the area where the spare goes with the closed-cell foam (you'll have to do a few cut pieces in order for it to fit nicely so that the spare pins the foam in place). Once that happens, you can do the interior floor by just getting some thick weather mats. You can place some closed-cell foam under the mats for added sound deadness. The doors and the headliner are the hardest parts as you will have to partially disassembly the doors (ie removing the door cards will require the removal of a couple of controls/wires). Tap on various locations of the door card before removal to find spots that are the loudness (generally areas that have a large flat area away from corners and bends) as those will be the spots where you want to put a patch of Dynamat or similar material. Remove the door cards and tap those locations again to verify. Apply a patch of Dynamat to the middle of those locations. You don't need much - only about 25% of the area needs to be covered. Tap again. I'll bet you'll hear a big difference of nothingness!

As for the carpet underlay, you really don't need it to stick to anything for the most part. You want it to just wedge into the door card's empty areas so just roughly cut out the same shape as the door card's openings. In some situations, you won't be able to cover the entire surface but that's fine as you just want to put it into the cavities of the door card. The only locations where you want the underlayment to stick are around any speaker openings as you want to dampen any extra noise that may leak out so you can either use spray-on adhesives or double-sided carpet tape. Remember to stay away from the door metal as it usually means that you will have to remove that plastic sheet between the door frame and the door card and you don't need to do that. Besides, sticking anything to the door metal is generally bad news as it means that you may trap moisture next to the metal skin which may mean rust in the future!

BHA1 wrote: ↑ Honestly for a Honda Civic this isn’t going to be worth it.

You’ll need to rip out virtually all interior coverings which is a LOT of labour.

Either trade in or sell for something quieter, or live with it. This assumes you don’t have a really noisy set of tires. Don’t replace them if they’re a bit noisy as it isn’t worth it. But If they’re howling then replace.

I’d find a reasonably priced Accord of the same year and test drive it. Then buy that if it meets your needs. If not maybe look at a cheaper model of Lexus.

^This. And especially not on a leased Civic that has only two more years to go. Gonna put like $600-1000 into sound deadening if you get a pro to do it and use "brand-name" materials like Dynamat. There are other materials that are just as good/better for cheaper but typically you're going the DIY route doing this and doesn't sound like OP plans on doing this themselves. Even DIYing I wouldn't put the time and effort into a car that you don't own and will be gone in two years.

Different tyres may indeed make a difference but apart from that I wouldn't put any money into getting an installer to do this. Maybe if you planned on keeping the car for 10 more years or something, sure; but for a leased Civic that's halfway into the term? Fughettaboutit.

ES_Revenge wrote: ↑ ^This. And especially not on a leased Civic that has only two more years to go. Gonna put like $600-1000 into sound deadening if you get a pro to do it and use "brand-name" materials like Dynamat. There are other materials that are just as good/better for cheaper but typically you're going the DIY route doing this and doesn't sound like OP plans on doing this themselves. Even DIYing I wouldn't put the time and effort into a car that you don't own and will be gone in two years.

Different tyres may indeed make a difference but apart from that I wouldn't put any money into getting an installer to do this. Maybe if you planned on keeping the car for 10 more years or something, sure; but for a leased Civic that's halfway into the term? Fughettaboutit.

Oh man, I missed the 2 years left on the lease. In that case, OP, do nothing unless you plan to buy it out, as you will have to remove it all to return the car to stock. Just go for some ear plugs.

engineered wrote: ↑ Oh man, I missed the 2 years left on the lease. In that case, OP, do nothing unless you plan to buy it out, as you will have to remove it all to return the car to stock. Just go for some ear plugs.

Nah it would cost more to remove than to install and it would be pointless to do so. This kind of thing is firstly invisible and secondly of benefit to subsequent owners, well unless their intention was to strip down the car for less weight and faster strip times, lol. That would basically be nobody buying a Civic base engine edition. Also sound deadening is not like mods so it won't decrease the value--leasing company won't know or care. But, what it would definitely be is a waste of money if you're just giving the car away after doing all that.

OP mentioned they might buy the lease out, but in that case they should definitely be sure that's what they're doing before forking dollars into this.

Thank you and appreciate everyone's feedback.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190129013 ... wdown.com/

The website closed a while back but I find it has a ton of great information.