MrZero's Interior Adventure (TM)....

[MrZero]

It's HOT down here in Austin this summer......HOT as balls.....100+ every day for months and no rain. I know for you Arizona\Nevada\New Mexico guys maybe this is not such a big deal, but this aint no desert and it's been one of the most brutal summers I can remember in my 16 years here. So, it was on one of these particularly roasting days that I came out to the truck, opened the door and smelled......well, I can only describe it as death covered in mildew. And vomit. And it was cooking. I, for some reason, expected this problem to "work itself out" over the course of a day or two. It did not. It in fact got worse. And so for more than two weeks, I put up with this, procrastinating and driving the beater Honda when I just couldn't take the stinging, eye-watering putrescence for longer than it took to grab my sunglasses from the cab. It was this horrid reeking nightmare that forced me into my snowballing interior adventure.

My original intent was to simply remove the carpets up front and steam clean them. After some consulting with Iaintscared1969, I decided to power-wash them instead in my driveway and glue in some new jute.

Here's the carpet after being pulled. I believe the origin of all of this to be there in the lower left of the picture all around where the e-brake hole is.....

And here they are post- power-washing. This is CLEAN for these carpets....and the amount of dark brown sludge and run-off that came out and ran down my driveway was astonishing...

And with new jute:

More to come.........

 

[Front Range 4x4]

Looks clean :whoops:

 

[Lost]

i cant tell, the pictures are too small

 

[MrZero]

So, once the carpet was ready to go back in, I was already knee-deep in the sound deadening. I picked up 50 ft. of Quietcrap from MMW68 and Cruisercrap and then 40 sq. feet of regular Damplifier from Ebay. This was just enough to do all four doors, floor boards all the way back and a bit left over for inside the rear panels. Quietcrap is MUCH easier to apply and has a thicker butyl rubber than the regular Damplifier, though the aluminum is thinner. It comes in a roll which made application of long uninterrupted sections possible.

Just after carpet removal and before cleanup:

Application on doors:

One thing I had to take care of before I applied on the floor boards (aside from cleaning all the old crap and jute out) was what I discovered under the wheel well covers in the passenger area:

 

[MrZero]

Then of course I had to finish cleaning up before I could lay all the deadener down. I needed special help for this:

Then over the course of several nights after work and one weekend day, I had it all laid down front to back and even had some time to put in some Luxury Liner on the front floors and tranny hump:

Ready to reinstall everything right? Nope. I HATE the stock 60 console and mine was beaten to s***. I didn't want to plunk down for a Tuffy or CCOT, so after some browsing and reading around the net, I stole multiple others' ideas and came up with this:

The cleanest 20mm ammo can I could find locally. I made an arm rest pad out of plywood I had in the garage, and foam and vinyl from the fabric store. 1 youtube video and some staples later and I had something that is not awesome, but it doesn't suck either....I like it just fine and it's super comfy. Then after tons of grinding, cutting and fitting, I used a bearing hinge from the gate hardware section at the Depot, added big eyebolts for padlocks, a Tuffy cupholder and shot it with Krylon Primer and sprayed the inside with black Plasti-dip.

 

[MrZero]

BUT......all this effort and time and I could not bring myself to re-install my old busted-ass front seats. So, I picked up some Procars from Jegs. Here's the front and passenger's area as it stands right now:

Now, after all that, I couldn't stand to ignore the cargo area. But I'd already blown my budget (HA!). My carpet was in bad shape and I had an old plastic "lockable" cargo box back there that was a source of much irritation, but I kept anyway. I needed a cheap solution. So, I took another play from the Mud book and got some $16 indoor\outdoor grey carpet from Home Depot, and used my old carpet as a template. First, I had to fix a problem under the cargo box......brake fluid had spilled, seeped through the screw holes in the bottom and stripped the paint under the carpet. Fixed that, cut the carpet, glued on some jute, recovered the tailgate panel and I'm pretty happy:

The 40mm can you see in that picture is what I'm working on now as some rear storage. I already have a method of bolting it to the supports behind the side panels and will do the same eye-bolt\padlock on both ends.

 

[Lost]

damn! super clean

 

[philos1]

Looks good, you'll appreciate the sound deadening once you drive it- feels like a luxury ride... well, it's much nicer anyways.

 

[mmw68]

It looks great!

I think you are the first customer to install the "QuietCrap" please give us a review, how does it sound? The procars look great too. Bring the truck buy this weekend, I'll help you put the speakers back in.

 

[MrZero]

The Quietcrap works for sure. It's made a very noticeable difference. Now, that said, in my opinion, anybody expecting luxury-car quiet in these old buckets is fooling themselves. I think you could get closer.....but you'd have to spray-on stuff on the engine-bay side of the firewall, and then rip out the whole dash and do the entire inside firewall with double layers of deadener and spray on top and then something like the luxury liner on top of that. Most of my sound is now clearly focused at the firewall and the transmission. I can tell a good portion of it is coming from the two gaping holes that the shifters come through that are only covered by the shift boots.

BUT.....every time I close a door or stick the key in the lock or push the lock down and hear a satisfying thud instead of a reverberating clang, makes it all worth it to me. I'm glad I took the time to do it.

So far though, my favorite part of all of this has been the seats....that's made the biggest difference in my enjoyment of driving the beast. The side bolsters are way high which makes for super comfortable sitting, but difficult in and out of the truck.....I need an a-pillar grab handle...

 

[sl33py]

Nice job! Love your assistant all decked out!

Great writeup and super clean looking truck (at least now...hehehe).

rob

 

[Dirtgypsy]

that looks fantastic! very clean.

Clint

 

[Creeker]

Very nice. I just bought some quiet crap for my birthday present to me; maybe seats will be my Christmas present.

Someone should come up with a solution for the shift boot noise transmission. Bueller?

 

[meatloaf]

Looks great! Nice and clean Jonathan... Bet your helper did all the work! I rhinolined and second skinned the floor and it made a big difference. Still need to do the doors.

ML

 

[MrZero]

Looks great! Nice and clean Jonathan... Bet your helper did all the work! I rhinolined and second skinned the floor and it made a big difference. Still need to do the doors.

ML

HA! I wish.....that was about as much as he was interested in! The shopvac is just a three-year-old's speed though....

The doors are my favorite part of all the dampening.....you should totally do it.

 

[mmw68]

X2 on the doors. Most people over look them - but lots of noise travels thru the doors, and most of the time the plastic moisture barrier that is between the door panel and metal is gone.

On my personal truck, I did the doors first, and about a week later got around to doing the rest of the truck. Just the doors made a huge difference.

 

[MrZero]

Got a couple more things done.

First, I finally came up with a mounting solution for rear ammo boxes that I'm happy with. I used carriage bolts, lock washers and nuts (all 3/8ths) for the hardware. I attached the bolts to the support struts behind the rear trim panel through the existing holes. Then I punched through the trim panel so the bolts protrude. Then the ammo can was drilled for those two bolts and attached with wing nuts on the inside. This way, I can take the boxes out if I need the space, but they're attached to the truck for a decent amount of security. The box pictured here will get the same treatment my center console got with grey primer and eyebolts\locks. I like the low profile of the 40mm box, but the storage capacity of a 20mm would be way better. I plan to do another setup on the other side and based on my storage needs may or may not switch to the larger 20mm, at least on one side.

Next I really wanted some better\more modern sound......I've had the same Alpine cassette deck and old Polk 5inch's in the front doors for years. I got a local hookup for 4 Polk db651 6.5" coax and a Sony CDX GT520. Currently I have just two speakers installed in the front doors and the head unit. I may try to do a custom install of the other two in the rear doors as I think I've decided to do 6x9's in the rear. I'm missing the trim ring for the head unit, so gotta find one of those. The speakers ended up being a bitch to install but I finally have them behaving.

 

[mmw68]

The Radio and Speakers look great! How much did you pay for them.

I found some trim rings the other day in my stash... let see if one of them would fit.

 

[TLCAddict]

how 'bout them carpros seats

zero-

nice work. sometimes, child labor is the best alternative!

what model procar seats did you get? how was the mounting/bracketing process? did it bolt directly to existing mounts? have seat install pics?

have a few on me...esp. to all ya'll austin folks sufferin in triple digits.
jz

 

[MrZero]

Mark, cool yeah we can see if one of them fits......I was able to score the correct Sony mounting cage from Ebay, of course now I need to find some Sony keys or I'll never be able to get it out!

JZ, thanks! He's not the best employee in that he takes a lot of breaks, but I'm able to pay him in peanut butter sandwiches. Those are the Elite's and I got them through Jeg's.....they came fast and right to my front door. All I had to do was take the old Toyota tracks off the bottom of the old seats and they literally bolted right up to the Procars......I've heard some folks have had to wallow out holes or drill new ones.....mine fit perfectly and I even used the Procar hardware.....

Oh and hey, it stayed in the 70's today!