Quick backstory - I bought the car in June 2022 and planned to do both this job and a Meridian to Meridian Surround upgrade at the same time, but I couldn't find a compatible amp so I just did this job. Afterwards I was happy enough with the results that the Surround upgrade went on hold for a while. I did this job in October 2022, am posting this in October 2023.


FIRST DAY - Driver's door

This took me about four hours but I really took my time to make sure I didn't break any clips, and I also spent quite a bit of time poking around in there to see how everything worked. Once I did the passenger door I wasn't happy with how I'd done this one, so I ended up coming back to spend another two hours for a total of six.

I started by following this video to get the door card off.. going very slowly it probably took 15-20min by the time I had it all the way off. I forgot the top clips pulled back towards me and I was trying to lift the door card up! Once the card was off I removed the big black plastic shield thingo in the middle of the door and spent a while poking around, making a few cardboard templates to test fit so I could cut fairly big pieces of the mat. In hindsight, big pieces weren't the best idea for inside the door skin; later I cut squares about 100x100 or 150x150 and lay them one at a time, which was heaps easier.

Here's the door before I started:



And here we are with the outer skin done:



Once I had inside the skin done I did the inner panel.. this was heaps easier without having to reach through the gap. I ended up just covering as much as possible including where the card meets the door which I think was a bad idea, as I had some trouble getting the clips to grab when putting it back on and I had to remove some matting. I thought there might be some vibration coming from the door card meeting the panel and packing it out a little might help, but it would be better done with a very small strip of foam rather than dynamat.

I also ran a strip of matting around the speaker spacers because while researching this project I learned that dynamat doesn't block sound, it makes what you stick it to heavier so it doesn't vibrate as easily. I might be the only person that didn't know this haha; it made complete sense once I read it but I guess I just never thought about it before then and assumed it blocked sound. Anyways I ended up sticking as much of it as I could to anything that looked like it might be able to move, rattle, shake, wiggle, whatever. I also ran the matting on the inner panel all the way to the edge of the speaker spacer hole and the big hole for the plastic shield (so the plastic screws down over the matting) as two hard surfaces together are vibration city.

Here's the inner panel done with the shield and speaker reinstalled:



It's worth noting I pulled down hard on the screws that hold the plastic shield and speaker spacer, as I wanted everything as tight as possible. A set of Torx T-bars is almost required for this project... I left mine at home so for this door I used allen-key-style ones like you can see at the very top of the next photo, but they just about tore my hands apart even with gloves on and I remembered my T-bars for the rest of the project!

Most of the vibration came from the door handle, speaker grille, and the little carbon fibre panel above the grille, so I weighed them down:



I then did the top speaker (mid) area:




While doing the top speaker area I noticed a couple of spots where two hard plastic panels contacted each other, which are likely to make noise if one of the panels moves... so I made sure a little bit of dynamat was between them, like this:



Finally I loaded up the door card itself... by this stage I'd gotten a bit sick of trying to make it fit nicely and I was running a little short on time, so I just cut big chunks to fill the larger space and didn't worry too much about the smaller space (this is what I came back and corrected after doing the passenger door).




The worst vibration of all comes from the window switches circled in red above... this vibration appears when mid tones are really strong, such as music with higher bass or during phone calls. It's not a rattle, it's a full-on 'vvvvv' vibration and it's infuriating. The switches themselves have a hard plastic housing which clips into a second hard plastic housing.. as I was moving the door card around I could hear it clicking. I was running out of time and I thought it was a job for foam rather than dynamat so I left it, and sure enough that one particular vibration is still there [img]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/img] If you know the vibration I'm talking about, it's coming from the switch cluster - now the door is dynamatted, I can press lightly on the switches and it goes away. I'll get rid of it tomorrow and report back!

SECOND DAY - Passenger door and finishing driver's door

I didn't take photos of the passenger door install as it mirrored the driver's side, but I did get photos of how I fixed the worst vibration of all.. It comes from the switch cluster, which has a surround that clips on:



The surround comes off with a clip at one end, and three on each side:

I didn't have any foam, so I packed the space below the surround with little pieces of dynamat so it couldn't move. This isn't a permanent solution - Dynamat is more of a thick liquid than a solid so it'll squish and the vibration will probably come back. I'll have the door card off again to do my speaker upgrade, and I'll replace it with foam then.



This took about an hour, another hour finishing off driver's door card.
Most of driver's door (yesterday) was bout four or five hours.
About four hours on the passenger door from start to finish.
TOTAL for front doors: 10-12hrs

Used six sheets of Dynamat (two thirds of a bulk pack).

 

THIRD DAY - back driver's door

I didn't follow a video for the rear doors, so I'll document the removal in a little more detail. First I used a jeweller's screwdriver to remove the little round cover inside the handle, exposing a T20 screw:


With the screw removed, removal of the handle recess is the same as the front.. Unclip the back at either side, lift, then pull backwards to unhook the front bit. Here's what it looks like removed:


This exposes two 8mm bolts which are easily dropped into the cavity, so a magnetic socket or needle-nose pliers are a good idea.


Next the speaker grille/handle trim come off but these are quite different to the fronts as they wrap around the door at 90deg. Using a trim tool and starting at the back, pop the clips all the way to where the 90deg fold is, then pull the cover towards you (away from the door skin). There are two clips perpendicular to all the others, and if you use the trim tool at the very front after the 90deg bend, you'll break them.

This exposes the tweeter, a bunch of T20 screws, and a 7mm bolt (recessed, under the tweeter):


This bolt has a really low profile head so, while a regular socket worked, a chamferless socket would have been handy.

This bolt is also the only one that needs to be removed.. the T20s hold the handle assembly onto the door card. I did remove the assembly after the card was off the door, so that I could lay some mat in the areas where the two parts meet.

With the three bolts removed, the clips just pop off. I started at the back and worked towards the front, but it probably doesn't matter which way you go.


Same as the fronts - once the bottom clips are popped, the top unclips by pulling towards you. Remove a few connectors and the handle cable, and off she comes.

I then removed the speaker, crossovers, and the plastic shield thingo, leaving me with a bare-ish door:


While giving it a wipe out I noticed a splash of water in there (I washed the car beforehand), so I started on the door card to give the door time to dry.

I figured out a trick while doing the second door last weekend... The top section of the door card is very concave and has lots of strengthening ribs, so I pre-cut the dynamat into various-sized pieces - biggest ones were about 60x20mm - and did it a little bit at a time. Worked really well, and sped things up heaps.



Once the top and edges of the card and all the little bits were done, I could use bigger bits to fill in the rest. The actual dynamatting of the door took about an hour and a half, and I ended up with decent coverage:


I wasn't worried about keeping it pretty this time... It's functional either way and hidden from view, so speed beats beauty here 🤣

Next up I did inside the outer door skin... I used the patchwork method again but this time cut squares of about 100-150mm. This worked brilliantly; outer door skin was done in a bit under 30min.

Same method for the inside door panel which was another 30-40min, then bolted all the bits back on:


The door card got a thorough cleaning with Gtechniq Tri-Clean and new clips went in; 9 of them, part number T4N9812. I then connected the door card back up, pushed in only a couple of the top clips, then checked everything worked before I pushed in the rest. I learned a lesson on the passenger front door... The door handle cable didn't clip in properly but I didn't test it, so didn't find out til a few days later when a passenger couldn't get out! Took a good 30mins or so to pull the card and fix it, when it would've taken 2 if I'd tested it properly 🤣

With everything working, the rest of the clips get pushed in and we're done! With the fader pushed all the way to the back, the quality difference between the driver's side and the yet-to-be-done passenger side was obvious.

The rear doors took about four and a half hours each, for a final total of approximately 20 hours' work. Worth it? ABSOLUTELY.

Used three sheets of dynamat for each rear door, meaning it takes about 12 sheets to do all four doors. I bought two bulk packs (18 sheets), and I'm hoping the remainder will be enough for the parcel shelf and the boot 🤞

 

Results, and how I felt about it at the time
After doing the driver's door but not the passenger door, I took my GoPro to the car and recorded a few songs... I pushed the fader to the front and slid the balance from left to right to isolate the driver and passenger speakers, below are the results. Headphones make these much better, and I think the third video might demonstrate the difference best (at least, it seems to for me).


The end result is exactly what I expected... the overall sound felt quieter but punchier, the bass a lot tighter, and the highs felt clearer. Once I had the whole car done I was really happy with the results, and the Meridian Surround job dropped a few places on my priority list.

HINDSIGHT - 12 months later
After 12 months there's really only two issues with this install:

• The switch panel I mentioned as the worst rattle was not fully fixed; I learned that mass-loaded vinyl (MLV) wasn't the right product to use in between two hard surfaces, and I should use a closed-cell foam instead as it'll hold its shape better.
• The speaker grille panels still rattle a little bit at volumes over 25, which I think requires both a little more MLV and some foam to stop movement. I rarely go that high so this isn't a big issue for me, but one I'll be aware of on my next install. The switch rattles at low volumes and is worth taking the cards off for another go, so the grilles might get done at the same time.

Otherwise the install has been flawless and the sound improvement has been great. Parcel shelf and boot still haven't been done, but might get done by the end of the year.

If you're an expert in this sort of work I'd love to hear what you think and where I can improve.. I plan to do this to some extent on pretty much every car I buy so it's a job I'd like to get good at

 

Great write-up!

 

Love your commitment, well done!