Auto Foam Application and Placement Washington DC

Foam is showing up all over the modern vehicle. Although its presence adds a new level of complication to repairs, it's imperative that it be reinstalled - and reinstalled correctly.

By Mike West
1/1/2007

Being a collision repairer for the vast majority of my life, I never imagined that I’d be fascinated by foam – in an automotive sense, that is.

Whenever an overabundance of foam has appeared in my beer glass, it would bring about a general sense of being taken advantage of and change my attitude toward the barman, to the extent that when I asked for the “same again,” I’d request that, “This time, decapitate the head.”

Other than that, my feelings toward foam were pretty benign.

Sure, I knew foam had something to do with getting a good night’s sleep and getting all comfy driving down the road, but I really wasn’t involved with foam in an automotive collision repair sense, nor did I imagine I ever would be. So I was blindsided when it began to show up all over the modern vehicle.

It really shouldn’t have surprised me that much because I’d been seeing different materials stuffed into waterproof bags and then packed into the inner quarter panel areas, which reduced the drum-like quality these large voids produced. This was the  first NVH material (noise, vibration, harshness) and really dampened down the hollow, echoing sound that made an automobile less-than-a-pleasure to ...