On Monday I'm dropping my Model S off at Don Sambrook's shop in Manchester, Maryland for him to begin work on sound deadening the car. Don is one of the top experts in the field and I'm very fortunate that his shop is only 20 miles or so from my home and that he could even take me as a client (he works himself on only 2 or 3 cars a year).
Don's website is a source of incredible depth on sound deadening techniques and materials but this will be the first Model S he's evaluated and done. He teams up with Bert Miller on all of the installation work. Bert's expertise is doing all the the tear downs of the interior that are necessary to do the job the right way.
Between now and then I'll be taking and saving a series of sound measures to record the sound levels on my drive to and from work every day. The route has a great mixture of road types with different surfaces — two lane country road with some speed bumps, busier two lane road, four lane, Interstate, city streets, and parking garage. So I’ll have some very good before and after measurements for comparison of results.
When the work is finished at the end of next week I'll take new measurements along the same course and post the comparative results.
Yes, I know the car is pretty quiet as it is, but this was inspired by my friend, SUPRKAR, who sound deadened his entire Model S over a period of 3 months. He told me the results were astounding -- it was like having a different car. He did all of the work himself. Although I intended to do this myself as well, when I looked carefully at what would be required I concluded that didn't have have the time or adequate work space to do it all. So I was fortunate to find Don, whose rates for both labor and parts are very reasonable.
I'll report back when I deliver the car to Don next Monday.