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... VERY tiring, indeed... but also VERY satisfying...


PDF file to follow soon.

Project SiKaDamp® on a Honda In(/Not)tegra
Noise Dampening Insulation Material Installation

Work started early on a Saturday morning (23 June 2007). We prayed that it would not rain, and boy, did it NOT rain. (We shouldn’t actually complain as it worked well for our cause, but the heat [!] was really something.)

During the later part of the day, my [younger] brother complained of nausea and dehydration, and we drank like lots and lots of water. Like lots. Due to the fear of ‘panau’, we stopped short of splashing water on our faces and necks. 

When I arrived, he has already started removing the seats. Both the front and the back ones too. And the insides were also clear of all other unrelated belongings – I swear, though he’s married, one can still identify him as being a bachelor (will all his stuff in the back seat and in the boot).

In any case, all the better for me. After a good, nice round of Nasi Dagang and Nescafe Tarik [besar + suam] for breakfast, I really don’t feel like entertaining small requests. :P (If you’ve had a good Nasi Dagang before, you’ll know what I mean). Besides, it’s his car, so I’ll let him do most of the work. HAHA!
The plan was to finish installing all the fourteen pieces [measuring 20cms by 80cms] of SiKaDamp, in the cabin of his car, within the whole of Saturday, and we allocated some time on Sunday for some ‘trouble-shooting’ and the like. Objective was met, in fact we probably could have finished everything earlier, if we didn’t have to stop and spend like slightly under three hours, to pick-up our parents and my sister and her family from the airport. [Yes, we used her house for the work, when she was away – and yes, it was damn messy – why do you think she let us in, in the first place?]

In any case, most photos were taken by me, during our short cigarette- and hydration-breaks, so if we missed any step or seemed to ‘jump’ topics, please excuse me.

Front seats were removed. See the steering-wheel? I keep on telling him again and again, that he shouldn’t strain the power-steering pump like that. *sigh* (Yeah, I know, it’s HIS car…)


Rear seats too. Notice the spare wheel-well is also empty. Also notice the dirty condition of the wheel-well. Of importance is that it is rather ‘naked’. That will soon change. The water drain-hole was also stuck. He sent the car for a paint of the original colour a few years back and evidently, the workshop painted ‘over’ the drain-lid and caused it to stick. [Paint-shop gave a bad work on other parts of the car as well.  Will never trust the paint-shop again.] We tried to remove the lid nonetheless and ended up totally breaking it to pieces – too rusted to be saved. *sigh*

As you could see, and if you already know how it looks like, my brother has previously installed SuperLON® but according to him, it made little difference to suppress the outside noises. [Frankly, I really don’t understand his obsession with eliminating noises from the cabin – but he needs help to finish it on time, and it’s a good lesson for me too…, and he IS my brother, so OKAY lah.] If you ask me, it was probably because the SuperLON he installed was not of the self-adhesive type. I put mine under the front bonnet and it worked good on my 855T5. Noise intrusion from the engine-bay was noticeably reduced. Ntahlah.


See the lid before we broke it (in yellow perforated circle).

A view of the front dash from the rear end of the car. The easy parts were already removed.


We spent the next half-an hour to revise our earlier plans on how many sheets of the noise insulation to use. The general concern was that, we don’t want to under-utilise the dampening material, after so much work was put in. In the end, we decided to use whatever and how much-ever material that we think would be good enough. [Sure, didn’t you notice? We’re also acousticians! HAHA.] Afterall he already bought the stuff, the way I look at it, just finish it all lah. Nak simpan buat apa lagi? The other car is a pariah car, thus needs no insulation. *grin*









STILL thinking about it…

The gap between the rear-bumper and the body was caused by a minor mishap months ago, that took him until now, to decide to have it looked at, next.






Removal of the dash-items started to take place. We took sometime to remove this air-cond duct **** controller. *sigh* We better know how to put them back again.







The side air-cond ducts and other minor items from the dash. Notice it laid above the rear-seat [back-view] and the rear-seat/boot original cover.

The glove-box removed and the glove-box metal-fitting. Syyyhhhh, don’t tell him, but when I fixed it back, I found one bloody screw that seemed to be ‘lost-in-place’. And after a few tries, and draining the batteries out of my cordless screwdriver, I decided to leave it out. [HAHA! I GOT A SCREW LEFTOVER!] But it didn’t affect the working of the glove-box though. Infact, I screwed the others well, that he couldn’t tell the difference! OK,OK, actually I told him about the screw and he was as uninterested to know more about the screw as I was of telling him. [So, I confessed!]









The front seats. The very-overpriced SONY Xplod (like it exploded!? Pfah!) head unit, together with a single DIN blank cartridge.

The left-out screw was from this metal-fitting. I know, I know, sooner or later it’s gonna shake – well, I told him about it, and he said he’ll look at it later. Well, at least when he reads this, he’ll be reminded of it.



I think when my sister’s kids got home, they hid the head-unit face…

Just a general view of what has been taken out from inside the cabin.

Notice the white hat? So, why does a biochemist need a hat like that for? He’s a lab-rat… Apparently, lab-rats are supposed to walk down the factory-floors every now and then to make inspections,.. or so he told me.





Some of the stuff we used to get the thing going. Yeah, I know, just by looking at these, you might think he’s too ambitious. I thought the same too. Lucky I brought my tool-pack along, but surprisingly, not many of my tools were used.







My tool-pack… I’m more of an engine-person (chewah – perasan!), so the pack is of ‘heavy-stuff’. Notice the flat, white ‘pick’? I got that from IPD of the US. I think its Teflon-something. Damn useful. Excellent application. Makes the removal of interior-trims a whole lot ‘scar-less’ and effortless, if you ask me. Now, why cant we think of producing something like that? [Maybe we already are, and shipping it allover the world. I don’t know.] IPDUSA calls it the ‘Bone-Tool’. I once used it to pry off the emblems T5-R from a friend’s wagon tailgate as demonstration, and I can still recall how he yelled when I succeeded. :right: 

Used the Bone-Tool to chip these buggers off, the FIRST-try…



The photo below is possibly the MOST IMPORTANT shot I forced myself to take, ever. After we successfully removed the dashboard, we had to make guesstimates [guess + estimates] on how the cables and wires get to where, and the stuff. Now, the Japanese were good at compacting things into small spaces – and we spent almost two hours trying, wondering and figuring out the routing of the two switches (circled green) below. We tried to force it through the hole (circled blue) to no avail. Countless times, the cables got stuck in between the main air-conditioning ducts in the middle of the dashboard, hence defeating the countless efforts to close the dash. [Also gave rise to tantrum-attacks… Hehehe…] This photo shows clearly where the route was supposed to be – yeah, we realized it, when I uploaded the photos to my laptop that Saturday night. Alamaaaaaaaaakkk, no wonder lah! Hehehe. 

The instrument panel. There were no issues bringing it out.


The view of the face of the instrument panel. It has clocked 221 thousand kms already… And the engine still running strong. 

Only half-way there… A lot more to open-up…







We decided to disconnect the battery-terminals, by mid-day. Yes, it should have been done earlier, but we forgot. Yes, we forgot. [We’re not full-time mechanics, you know…]






Middle-console and the arm-rests were the next to go… In our effort to remove the dash, my brother provided printouts of instructions from the internet-forums of what and were the screws are etc, and that kept us going 30% of the time. Whoever the contributors are/were, THANKS a bunch, guys!

The ‘hollow-look’ of the dash. Took me a full ten-minutes to remove/screw-off the gear-knob. Man, the thread was so close…







My brother, at his best, trying to memorise what goes where and through what. When he’s done/full, I take my shot pulak.Well, if you think about it, yes, we probably should have used little-cutouts of masking tapes to properly label them, or at least have a permanent marker on standby to scribble abbreviations on parts etc. But we didn’t. Yep, that’s an AFTER-THOUGHT, as well…  Besides, we’re lazy lah…

Dok lepak bawah dashboard macam expert je… HAHAHA… Padahal, dulu dia dah pernah bukak dashboard sekali. Menyesal. Sekarang bukak lagi. Menyesal jugak. 







OK, so I cheated. Instead of just memorizing the connections that we severed, I memorized AND took photos. Heh, this isn’t a race, whaaaat?

Pening kepala aku tengok nih.
I see *stars* the minute I see this.









A close-up of the *stars* that I see…






I would guess about 60% of our time were concentrated on the dashboard and the connections