I got the bulk of our insulation completed before New Years, but some insulation and sound deadening dragged on. Today I made a bit of progress on the sliding door and rear wheel wells.

I had partially removed the headliner above the cab a few weeks ago, but it looked like I was going to need to remove the entire shelf to get the headliner out. Just before tackling that, I decided to check the forum again, and found a post from Zyzzyx where he pulled the headliner without removing the shelf. With that, I decided to pull a little harder, and lo and behold, it came out! In my van there were some foam blocks on the leading edge of the headliner, and they were quite a tight fit. Rather than gluing in the Thinsulate, I laid it in place, and wedged some small scraps into the side cavities.

side cavity insulation

For the sliding door, there are several ribs in various locations, but they have space around them. So it’s possible to cut larger pieces of Thinsulate to fit around the rib to door metal attachments.

Here’s one piece cut out:

Sliding Door insulation - cutout

And here’s the final install. It might be possible to put two layers in some locations, but I chose not to. There are several lock cables, and I’m concerned that the extra pressure of the Thinsulate may cause them to bind over time. Maybe I’ll come back to it later once I’ve dealt with all the other insulation, but there’s lots of other things (e.g. pillars, roof line, doors) to deal with first.

Sliding Door insulation - install

Where the Thinsulate would friction fit, I just left it in place, but where it tended to sag, I attached it with 3M 90 Spray Adhesive - one coat on the metal, one coat on the Thinsulate.

For the rear wheel wells, I added Noico sound deadening and then another layer of Thinsulate, and taped down with Gorilla Tape. It’s arguable whether the Thinsulate is enough on its own (probably) and I’m more concerned about insulation than resonance and deadening. I had purchased the Noico anyway for some of the cab areas where there’s not enough room for Thinsulate, so I had it on hand.

Rear Wheel Wells

UPDATE 2018-08-28: The Gorilla tape has started coming loose - I should have used more tape. I thought I would have covered the wheel wells with a box by now, but unfortunately I haven’t gotten to that yet.