Eastwood Thermo-Coustic – It Will Even Quiet a Vuvuzela!

If you haven’t been watching the World Cup (as a sports fan/geek, I felt compelled to at least watch parts of the US matches), you’re probably completely lost. That’s OK – you have been spared. The vuvuzela is a plastic horn, derived from a traditional African tribal instrument originally made from the horn of an antelope, that produces an intensely loud and irritating sound, like a bee buzzing right inside your ear (for more info on vuvuzelas, click here). The best automotive comparison I can devise would be when you have a loose part somewhere in your interior and you can’t find it; every bump in the road, every driveline vibration, every sound from your stereo seems to trigger an onslaught of rattling or vibrating and still you cannot pinpoint the problem and it is slowly pushing you to insanity. I know, I’ve been there. While performing a milkshake-related transaction on a particularly muggy North Carolina day, I somehow managed to drop some change down into my door panel when the window was rolled down and, even after removing the panel, I could not locate it. It got to the point where I dreaded and avoided driving my car because I didn’t want to be tortured by the clatter of these phantom coins. Even if you don’t have a loose part, or are more careful with your currency, road and engine noise can still make the cabin of your vehicle a pretty noisy place.

And that’s why we’ve developed the Thermo-Coustic Barrier. In addition to its excellent sound-deadening properties, Thermo-Coustic provides excellent resistance to heat, keeping the cockpit of your vehicle cool and drastically increasing your comfort level at an almost obscenely low price. If you don’t believe me (most of that first paragraph sounded like an irrelevant rant, so my credibility is low), check out the demo video (again, for stunning 720p, click here).

Awesome, right? Thermo-Coustic is comprised of three main parts, each of which serves a vital purpose. That high performance aluminum facing isn’t just for show (although it does look crisp, doesn’t it?) – it reflects heat back at its source to keep you cool during those long summer cruises. In the middle of this shiny sandwich is a layer of butyl rubber, designed to be impermeable to air and reduce vibrations in the bodywork which amplify road and driveline noise (more on this in a second). Finally, we’ve added dual-purpose hi-tack adhesive; in addition to making installation incredibly easy, it also ensures that Thermo-Coustic will adhere to pretty much any surface for a long time to come. If you noticed, in the video the Thermo-Coustic almost jumped onto the test panel and I barely needed to smooth it out. After heating up the rear of the test panel with the propane torch, I could immediately touch the aluminum facing of the Thermo-Coustic and it was barely hot.

So now that you know what’s in it, you’re probably wondering how it works. Without getting too technical, sound waves travel as a vibration (you can hear it as the prolonged ringing of the door skin the first time I hit it with the hammer). The butyl rubber in Thermo-Coustic absorbs these vibrations, rather than amplifying them the way steel and other metals do, and the end result is that muffled “deadened” sound you heard in the video. If you’re an audiophile, this means you’ll be able to enjoy a richer sound quality from your stereo, simply because the Thermo-Coustic has significantly decreased all the other ambient noise. Either way, Thermo-Coustic will allow you to enjoy the fruits of your hard work in cool, quiet comfort.

Enjoy!

Shawn

(P.S. If, for some reason, you really want to hear that vuvuzela, click here. But, I’ve given you plenty of warning – it’s really annoying.)