#1 I could find no place to leave my critical review for the QuietRide Acoustihood insulation kit I received from Jeff's Bronco Graveyard.
Indeed when i go to the Quiet Ride site, my product is not even listed there, nor is there any place to leave a review for any quietride product on any site.
But I wanted to leave one some place because of my much less-than-spectacular experience with the product.
First I had to ascertained that indeed mine is a Quietride product by finally finding it again on the CJ Pony parts site. Quietride is listed as the manufacturer there.
First the attributes that I like about the kit:
#1 I was pleased to find a better hood insulation solution for my old truck hood that is similar to the insulation under my new car hood that is way better than the OEM crap blanket that fell apart in a couple years.
#2 The insulative blanket is high quality
#3 The spray adhesive is high quality.
#4 The plastic clear tube drill bit guard that is supplied works well.
THE NEGATIVES:
#1 the instructions are stupid and useless because it says to use the grommets to install the ABS shield and then to tape around it in order to establish a border to spray to and not over.
The stupidity of this is that, a) the abs shield is like 6" larger than the blanket on all sides. b) the spray is highly accurate, so one is wasting one's time if one follows the stupid instructions, even with a multi insulation panel kit, because ALL of it is going to be covered with the ABS shield anyway, whether it is 1 piece or several. c) and I'm certain I could accurately spray, without a tape border, individual panels without overspray if I so desired. d) the supplied single use grommets are not even enough as it is, let alone if one risks wasting them on an unnecessary pre-installation installation!
#2 The silver metallic tape is so thin and cheap that it's nearly impossible to even peel from the paper backing and isn't needed because THE ABS SHIELD TOTALLY COVER THE INSULATION THAT'S BEEN GLUED TO THE HOOD ALL READY UNDERNEATH THE SHIELD! b) the installation video (incidentally, showing the installation of a completely flat, geometrically even abs panel on a completely flat car hood, which hood and abs panel isn't close to being and why it sagged and was kind of nasty looking) says to install the tape around the edges of the insulation to prevent condensation from leaking out of the raw edges of the insulation. This is bad advice for 2 reasons: a) sealing moisture inthe literal blanket insulation that's laying directly on a metal surface, painted or not, is self defeating because it traps the moisture in the blanket against the metal that will then rust out eventually. Therefore, it's much better NOT TO seal the edges so the blanket can POSDSIBLY evaporate the moisture. D) the adhesive back of the tape will come unstuck from the hood when there is condensation and therefore won't seal a damn thing!
#3 The holes do not line up with the ones in the hood. In most cases, I had to search for and elongate the mount hole an 1/8" to a quarter inch in any direction in order to line up with the ones in my hood
#4 after i installed all the grommets, it still wasn't enough to hold the shield snug and tight and nice up against my hood. It still buckled and sagged on the edges and middle.
b) So I had to drill holes and 9 more grommets to be confident that it all wouldn't fall off, there was so much sagging in the field and buckles on the edges. c) then I ADDED 9 MORE grommets to eliminate most of the buckles and flappiness away from the hood around the edges to make it look as good as it should look given what I paid for this kit
#6 none of the issues I had are covered by the instructions or materials. In fact I had to come up with My own solutions, which included using a heat gun to mold the abs to the contours of the underside of my hood instead of leaving it a flat, saggy and ugly looking under my hood after following all of the instructions. SO NONE of the instructions, written or in video even show or tell the installer that the abs shield is thermoplastic and therefore can be easily heated with a heat gun and molded into the contours of your hood for a much nicer looking installation which makes the Abs plastic shield to appear to be custom molded to the hood underside instead of hanging on the underside of the hood and sagging the opposite direction of the contours of the hood between the sparsely spaced grommet fasteners.
#7 For $300, this kit should AT LEAST come with an over abundance of the I'm-guestimating-5-for-a-penny grommets AND NO CHEAP unnecessary metal tape.
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