Hi guys,

I'm currently de-rusting my floor pan (inside). Ordered a set of REM sound deadener from Fusick for my car (1966 Starfire, Fusick part no. is SDM-30). I unpacked it. It's made from rubber and has a cellophane wrap on one side. There is a instruction sheet in the box, but it's for different cars (however the mats seem to fit for my B-Body) and does not give indications how to install the mats. I checked their website but I didn't find any additional information. Searched google and did not find much either, except some warnings that the stuff seems to be of mediocre quality and fit.

Now I wonder how the mats should be applied to the floor pan:

1. Just lay them there with the cellophane side on top - will they not slip then?
2. Remove the cellophane, place the mat with the "cellophane side" down and stick it to the floor pan? However, it does not feel sticky under the cellophane.
3. Like option 2, but heat it up in order to glue to the floor pan? The rubber-ish material does not look like it could take lots of heat.
4. Glue it with some type of glue? Does not sound like a real option to me.
5. Discard the REM set, just use the pieces as a template and and use normal aluminum-covered butyl mats like Dynamat

Did any of you already apply such a set of REM sound deadener (rubber version)? If yes, which experience can you share? Thanks for sharing any experience or feedback, I really appreciate!

Cheers, Steffen


Sticker shows the right vehicle

Included installation manual does not fit with the kit, however the mats themself seem to be the right ones. Installation instructions are quite weak and do not give any recommendation for the rubber-only mats which I have.

Here the cellophane-covered side of the rubber mat is shown

cellophane partially removed

 

Not too many of us have ‘66 Starfires. I have a 1966 Starfire and I hate noise in cars.

The first thing to know about noise in old cars is that you cannot compare a 1966 car to the cars from today. The biggest noise difference is that car windows today roll up into window frames on the doors which make them quieter than the open design in your ‘66 Starfire. Also the vent window can make noise. If your car does not do that, do not change the glass or rubber on the vent windows. The replacement vent window rubber is not as quiet as the GM factory rubber, if the factory rubber is not all cracked and destroyed.

The next thing to know about noise in these old cars is that when you stick down noise insulation, it will get rid of some of the big road noises. But when the big noises are eliminated, you will soon discover smaller, quieter noises which old cars make. This might take you on a journey to make the car as quiet as possible. That can be a very long trip. For me it has been at least 10 years, but not constant - just working on it once in a while to try and make things better (Immer Besser?)

The cellophane on your insulation should cover the sticky side of the material. If that is true, the sticky side of the material goes down against the clean metal of your floor pan. The idea is that the material sticking to the metal stops vibrations from the metal from moving across the floor pan or metal panel by absorbing the sound wave. That should make the car quieter.

Before sticking your material to the car, be sure your car metal panels are very clean. Scrape off all the old stuff, vacuum the metal panels very well and take pictures of where the screws and other fasteners will go before you stick the material down. The cleaner the interior is, the less noise it will make.

If I had gotten a kit from Fusick, I would leave the protective cellophane in place and test fit all the pieces to be happy with where I would eventually permanently place them. Once I understood where each piece goes, I’d label it and maybe put down some painter’s tape showing where the corners go.

The theory on these materials is that you do not need 100% coverage, you only need enough insulation material to stop vibrations from traveling across metal panels, perhaps 30-50% coverage. Since I really hate noise, I went for 100% coverage from my trunk to my firewall, but that is an extreme & unnecessary effort. But I _really_like_ quiet.

Instead of the Fusick kit, I used Dynamat and Dynaliner and cut it to fit my car. Once the seats and carpet are removed, this is a fun project. In my extreme case, I scraped off all of the insulation on the underside of the roof and replaced it with Dynamat. I stuck Dynamat down on a very clean floor pan, then used the Dynaliner as the second layer to replace the jute that GM used in 1966. Jute soaks up water, where Dynaliner will not because it’s closed cell foam. It is important to admit that the Dynamat products are not cheap. Your Fusick kit is probably a better value.

I have a bunch of threads trying to explain what I’ve tried and learned on quieting these old cars. Dig around under my user name here on Classic Olds and you’ll find a bunch of threads working on 1966 Starfires, particularly windows and noise reduction. Here’s one:

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-noise-172380/

Hope that helps,
Chris

 

Hi Chris @cfair ,

thanks much for your comprehensive feedback. Actually, I read (hopefully) all your contributions on noise reduction and asked myself also already whether I am starting to put myself into a vicious circle with an (unreachable) expectation of arriving at a modern cars noise level. All your hints from the other threads are taken into consideration already ;-).

I just purchased this sound deadener product from REM already one year ago and just now want to install it (no way to give it back, especially from Europe shipping would be too expensive).

This was why I asked for experiences with the REM sound deadening stuff, since it does not have a "sticky" side as the conventional sound deadening butyl-based products. the rubber under the cellophane is not sticky and I wonder how to apply it correctly.

I also purchased a new floor with insulation below from Rockauto, this is waiting to go in the car as soon as I made my decision whether and how to install the REM package or to do like you (Dynamat or similar).

Will take me 1-2 weeks more until I will come back here. Additionally I'll send an email to REM to ask for their recommendation how the installation shall be done. I'll post the feedback here, if I get something.

Have a nice day all!
BR, Steffen


Still, my car is not ready for summer season, started too much at once: Dual master cylinder upgrade / complete steering overhaul / engine overhaul / interior refresh / complete check & repair/upgrade of electrical system (e.g. 150A alternator with internal regulator) and wire harness



Current state of floor pan, where the REM stuff shall go. will first be cleaned and de-rusted...



Overhauled engine ready to install, but I first want to complete the interior incl. steering column and dashboard. Want to be ready to hit the road in approx. four weeks, puh...

 

I have owned this car since 1998. Look around under my user name & you will find many posts I have done restoring and modifying it for modern use.

My first 1966 big car restoration was a 98 Convertible. I always wanted to know how the hardtops compared to the convertibles, so I found a ‘66 Starfire for $4,000 or so in 1998. The body was not so hot, but it was rust free and the chrome/stainless was in great shape, so off I went restoring my second 1966 big Olds…

Over 25 years or so, I have developed a some opinions about how to make these cars work well 60 years after they were designed. I hope I do not offend you with my views. I apologize in advance if you find my views too strong.

The first thing to me is safety. To me that means at least a dual master cylinder, in my case front disk brakes, 5 or 6 seat belts, a fire extinguisher always, & tools in the trunk. And, of course, a mobile phone. I carry my wife, children, family & friends in my old cars for fun. If anyone were ever harmed from riding with me, I’d sell the car. Safety first. Tires, brakes, suspension, bushings, electrical & so on. Make it as safe as you can. Be formal about everything related to safety. It’s no problem if a window does not go up, but the if brakes do not work or the carburetor leaks petrol, fix that before you have any passengers.

The next thing is reliability. Old cars that don’t start or make weird noises make me annoyed/upset. So things like the water pump, alternator, power steering pump, radiator, distributor and carburetor need to work as designed. If the important mechanical parts work right, the next thing the electrical system.

If you have time, skills & interest, restore the factory wiring harness to the best of your ability. Think about upgrading the wire size for high amperage circuits: alternator output, starter motor, and battery leads. After that, the A/C/heater motor and headlights, plus any high amperage accessory circuits like power seats, power windows and maybe the rear window defroster. GM built good wiring harnesses in 1966, but upgrading the wire size on high amperage circuits reduces heat & improves reliability. If you make changes to the harness, make a text file or write a paper on the changes you made. 5 years later you may not remember what you did in 2025. You will be happy for any clues you leave yourself for a later day.

Brake & turn signal lights can be tricky. The best advice I can offer is to clean the GM terminals in the plastic shells where the bulbs sit to be sure there is good conductivity. If any lights don’t work chase down the problem with a test light. I use a dremel tool with a wire wheel to clean up the metal spades in the terminals, but you have to figure out how to get them out of the plastic shells for cleaning. Usually this is a tang or “tooth” that needs bending to remove, but sometimes it’s trickier than that. See the web on “Packard 56” terminals and plastic shells for a ‘66 Starfire.

Once the car is safe & reliable, you will want it nice. For me part of that is quiet. 1966 quiet is not 2025 quiet. I have a 2016 Audi Q7 that I use for road trips. My ‘66 Starfire will never be that quiet. Be good to yourself and do not compare old against new cars. See my posts on how to make 1966 big cars quiet. This is all I have learned over the past 40 years or so. Read, test, try, and enjoy. My biggest advice is that you get new rubber seals (new old stock if possible, but more likely reproduction). Then take your time fitting them.
So, on to a quiet 1966 Starfire. My big advances were pretty simple:
1) I covered the floor pan from the rear of the trunk pan floor to the firewall in Dynamat. I mean the whole trunk floor, parts of the wheel wells, the entire passenger cabin floor up to the upper part of the firewall behind the dash. After that, I added a second layer of Dynaliner in the passenger cabin to replace the jute GM used which just soaked up water & got moldy. The wiring in my passenger cabin went on top of the Dynamat & below the Dynaliner layer. This way I can fix any broken wires, but I leave the Dynaliner loose (not glued) to do repairs..

2) I replaced the tarpaper in the front doors & interior rear quarter panels with 1/4” thick closed cell foam. This keeps water out of the passenger cabin & I believe it reduces road noise too. It’s not hard - you just use an Xacto or sharp knife to cut the material to fit and glue it down. If you cannot find 1/4” thick, 1/8” thick closed cell foam will work too and it will be easier to fi since it is a thinner material, but perhaps it will not reduce noise as much as the thicker material.

3) The roof is optional, but I think it helped a lot. I scraped the GM cardboard insulation off the underside of the roof & replaced it with Dynamat. My roof makes no noise, but I still must do the sail panels behind the rear windows. I don’t think the sail panels make much noise, but why not be complete? Maybe I will get to it some day…

4) Once you block floor pan & door noise, you learn that the window seals generate a lot of noise in these cars. So then you focus on getting the window as quiet as possible. This is hard. Very hard. This can be days & days of testing & listening. See posts under my username on window adjustment for further suggestions/experience. The process is that you adjust, test drive, adjust again, test drive, and on, and on, and on. This repeats until you decide you are done. To be clear, “being done” just means done (or you are tired of working on noise reduction). It does not mean satisfied. This is where you must not compare 1966 cars to modern cars. You decide what is acceptable for a ~60 year old car. I have a hard time with this, but I am becoming more reasonable.

5) I see you have power windows. This is a very cool & rare option for 1966. Be aware that you can buy replacement switch contacts for these cars in case yours are worn out. But another very cheap fix is to simply polish your switch contacts with a file, nail file, or dremel to restore electrical conductivity. You bend the contacts apart, file off the black carbon to shiny metal and they should work perfectly. While the door panels & rear quarters are off, clean the bottoms of the doors and rear quarters, then grease the window tracks with good modern synthetic grease. Lithium grease was recommended in 1966, but modern grease is better and does not dry out.

6) For further quiet in the passenger cabin, be aware that Olds put a cardboard or fiberboard divider behind the rear seat to stop noise from the trunk. I used construction floor protection board (1/8” or so thick) which I cut with a utility knife. I had to poke a few holes in it for wires, vacuum lines and so on, but then screwed it down to the body of the car with 5/16”s sheet metal screws more or less as Olds did. I think I have an additional layer of thick recycled fabric between the hardboard and the seat back too.

7) Optionally, you can decide to stick some Dynamat or similar material in the front fenders, rear wheel wells, or trunk quarter panels. I have not done this, but I may do this some day in future. It’s more weight, but I’m not sure it would make the car much quieter. The general recommendation is for 20-40% coverage. This is up to your judgment on weight versus benefit.

8) In case you are curious about a factory wheel look instead of the TorqueThrusts — I retrofitted 5x5 pattern 15x8 wheels with Chevy 3049b (‘70-71 Monte Carlo) fake wire wheel hubcaps. You can bolt on the 3-bar 1966 Olds spinners & they look almost factory. Olds delivered the big cars with 14x6 wheels in 1966. They didn’t make hubcaps that fit 15x8 wheels. But GM being GM helped me - both Olds & Chevy secured their hubcap centers with 4 screws, so swapping centers is easy!

It looks like you have a column shift car. If you can find the Tilt & Tele column from an 88/Starfire/98 column shift car, that’s a nice upgrade, but they are mechanically complex with some easily broken parts that are now rare. If you’re interested, see my posts on servicing the Tilt & tele column.

If you are putting a modern stereo in the car, be aware that a single DIN unit will fit in the glove box. I use the Alpine CDE-HD149BT in my glove box and put amplifiers in the trunk mounted underneath the rear package tray above the spare tire. A good way to run speaker wires is just how Olds did in 1966: on the passenger side below the seats & up to the trunk. I stuck a 10” subwoofer in my trunk on the driver’s side just to have some nice bass tones. For speakers I did 6x9”’s under the rear package tray and 6.75” rounds in the kick panels. My car has A/C so I cut room for the front speakers in the block off plates and used the big car non-ac kick panels as covers. Completely hidden modern stereo.

Listen carefully for suspension problems. If you hear a “clunk” sound something is not right. Mostly the suspensions in these cars are not tricky, but if you add a rear anti-sway bar, I suggest you do it with “boxed” not “open” trailing arms. Some Cutlass boxed arms fit the big cars, but I’d need to dig around my old posts to remember which.

Hope I did not overburden you with details on the ‘66 Starfire. I’ve had great fun with mine and hope you do with yours too.

Cheers
Chris

I recommend using Moog or other rubber suspension bushings in this car. I tried polyurethane which is very well promoted and they work just fine, but to me they were just too stiff/rough for this car. I had polyurethane in my car for 2 years or so and just couldn’t stand the rough ride, so I put in rubber 20 years ago and have been very happy ever since.

 

I read some where that some cars use a "white" noise generator to make cars quieter.

 

Hi!

@cfair Chris, nothing of your feedback is taken to strong, instead I take all your super valuable experiences and thoughts for serious and follow most of them. This is also exactly why I appreciate this great forum and your and the other contributors information a lot! E.g. I followed your recommendations already by upgrading to dual-circuit master cylinder, putting in an 140A generator with internal regulator (and of course the proper 6-gauge charge wire), etc etc.
In cases where I don't follow it is mostly due to effort or parts availability (yet), e.g. conversion to front discs is a struggle to at all find parts and even more here in Europe. Maybe next year I'll be checking also the disc brake thing. Here I have a probably crazy idea: Try to find a vehicle with 5x5 bolt pattern and disc brakes and check if I can take parts from there. E.g. Chevy C10, G20 vans have such setups and it would be easy to get new spare parts. I think of replacing the spindles in case steering links, ball joint connections should fit and after all the wheel geometry would be still good. When it's time for that, I'll open a separate thread, but as said it's a bit crazy (mean: Probability for this to be possible is very low, e.g. C10 spindles have the steering links in front of the axle, which means I'd need to swap left/right; and the speedometer pickup would not be possible so I'd potentially solve this by converting my transmission output to a later style with speedometer gear and hope/calculate if the speedometer would still show correct values).

Regarding the sound deadening also thanks much for your practical "howto" style feedback, super! Especially point 6 I wasn't aware and will do this. Regarding wheels I recently bought a set of used Ansen Sprint wheels in 8.5x15 with 5x5" bolt pattern. They will get new 235/60R15 tires in the next weeks for a more contemporary wheel style.

Regarding stereo, I purchased an original radio and replaced an 80's style aftermarket radio which was installed when I bought the car. Luckily the previous owner did not cut the steel dashboard to fit it, so my dash looks original again now. However, the radio is just sitting there without connections. For actual audio listening, I decided to integrate a high-quality amplifier with integrated DSP and bluetooth connection under the rear shelf (ESX VE900.7). the system consists of the amp, a power capacitor from ESX, rear shelf speakers (Hertz SPL690Neo), front 2-way speakers (Musway MG6.2A) which at the moment are prepared to go inside, a front center speaker (Retrosound R-410N) and a subwoofer in the trunk (ESX DBX800A).

Last year I had only installed the rear speakers and the amp, and due to annoying drone in the car did an interesting analysis: I used an app called "FerquencyGenerator" on my android tablet to play a frequency sweep (0-20kHz) to the amp. With another app on my android phone called "Spectroid" I captured the response (in order to tune it later). The result is shown in the image below. It showed clearly some resonance frequencies in the car. In a next step I played the resonance frequencies statically with the Frequency generator app (you can create different waveforms and frequency patterns there). The result was stunning: You could touch the vehicles chassis and body surfaces and feel exactly which parts are stimulated. this is a great indicator where to apply dynamat effectively. I can only recommend this procedure to everyone!

This year, after installation of the complete audio system I plan to use a more exact audio measurement method with a PC software called REM and a calibrated measurement microphone called UMIK-1. It's fun since there is a lot to learn... Additionally, I want to cancel out the root cause of my car's drone since basically between 85 km/h and 95 km/h I have an annoying drone which comes from the exhaust. My car currently is equipped with two turbo mufflers and NO resonators under the trunk. I already checked some threads here and think of installing a pair of Vibrant UltraQuiet resonators and check the change.

Regarding suspension bushings, I fully agree with your way, and already went the same direction (build in original style Moog bushings). Since I worked in ZF in the past as an engineer for chassis and steering systems, I know how many engineer hours and state-of-the art measurements tools and methods go into the development of a car. They usually find the best compromise which cannot be made better. Of course our Starfires are on state-of-the-art of 1966 and methods & materials improved since then. But especially regarding PU bushings my opinion is clear: All parts of frame, body and suspension have so much flex in such an old car, that "stiffer" bushings will not make your car more precise. They only will deteriorate the ride experience by more noise and vibration propagation. Which you confirm in your post. And I even highly doubt that the PU bushing manufacturers ever did one single test drive with a '66 Starfire but just take drawings and just design their parts to mechanically fit (I'd even take the guess that they never do this with any car).

@Love1955oldsmobile , good hint, just I prefer to eliminate the unwanted noise as good as possible before "overpainting" it with additional noise.


Spectroid app screenshot, especially the peak in the red line (red=maximum in the current measurement, yellow = momentary spectrum) around 125Hz going up to -20dB caused the body to resonate like crazy. The app also offers the possibility to zoom in etc.



Previously installed aftermarket Radio with metal cover...



Luckily the original dashboard was not cut...



Now, I have an original radio installed. It is the basic AM radio, I even replaced the five plastic ***** with chrome ones (from the AM/FM and WonderBar radios) for better looks :-)

 

By the way I got a feedback from REM which I post here:

I'll check their recommendation within the next weeks and post my result here again. However, at the moment I think I'll prefer to use Dynamat style aluminum-butyl product and stick it to the areas, and just use the REM stuff as an expensive cutting template. I am concerned that it may move around without glue, and don't want to use extra glue on my body if possible...

BR, Steffen

 

That original radio looks much better in there. If Europe still broadcasts on the FM band, be aware that you can get (with some searching…) AM/FM band radios for that car. The ultimate was AM/FM with a Reverberation unit mounted in the trunk to give the rear speaker a bit of a delay and “fuller” sound. Very cool option. The reverb units were delco and the Olds/Pontiac units are the same - only the dash switches are different for 65-66 between Pontiac and Olds.

Personally, I put my aftermarket radios on the left side of the glove box and then put gauges on the right. The glove box will hold a 1 DIN head unit. I like the Alpine HD 149 BT. Small, versatile and works great with an iPhone or iPod. Can also control a trunk mounted CD changer if you still use those.

I’m with you on the Dynamat, but be aware it’s expensive. I think it’s the best stuff, but you may want to use the REM stuff on the outer skin - like the inside of the outer door/panel skins once you are done using them as a template. If they advise a 3M adhesive product, it will probably work well. But if Dynamat is thicker, you will probably get the car quieter from that, even if it costs more. I don’t want to talk anyone into expensive materials, especially when I don’t know anything about the quality of the REM materials.

Enjoy!
Chris