Seems that a lot of us would like to have our automobiles be an extension of our living rooms. In other words, we want them to be quiet. Just whisper quiet. Well, there are a lot of things that vehicle manufacturers are doing along tha-- those lines, but there are things that you can do yourself. 

If you want your car quitter or you want to protect against heat coming into the car, things like that, well, there are various types of matting that can go under the carpeting. You cut them to fit, you buy it by the yard or by the package, and you fit it into the footwells and so on, on the floor of the car and sometimes inside the doors and so on. Makes a big difference. Or, there are products that you can buy, that you spray either inside the car, inside the doors or on the outside of the floorboards and so on. Again, cuts down on a lot of noise. 

But now, the other thing that a lot of people don’t do as their car ages, they tend to get noisier. Well, lots of times, that is because of the weather stripping. They don’t take care of the weather stripping, and over time, the weather stripping-- the rubber in it-- gets hard and it no longer makes a good airtight seal. So, one of the things that you want to do is make sure that you use a spray or rub on silicone on the weather stripping, and that should be done, oh, 3 or 4 times a year. That helps keep the rubber soft and pliable and helps to keep down wind noise. 

Now, when we’re talking about noise, we have to talk about some of the newer cars. The newer cars, well a lot of them are using noise cancelling technology. Now what that is, is they find a frequency inside the car, a noise that’s objectionable, then through the speakers where you can’t even hear it, they pipe in a sound that is 180 degrees out of phase with the annoying noise. One noise cancels out the other noise. Pretty amazing stuff, and we’re seeing more and more of it, so we’re probably going to see a lot more quiet cars.  

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