My GTA is an 87' and I love the thing to death. The thing that I love about muscle cars is the rumble. My car is at the year where when I first start it up it has that nice rumble, but as it warms up the sound is more stable. Is the carburetor the part on a muscle car that always it to rumble like its about to cut off? If its not please let me know what part that is and if I can put that on my car to get that nice sound. Thanks

 

Most likely you're getting an open-loop rumble from an improperly adjusted carb. It rights itself when it goes to closed loop, but it probably is "working" harder than it should be. A stock LG4 simply doesn't "rumble" when properly tuned.

That "old muscle car rumble" is a combination of camshaft overlap and exhaust system (and inefficient carb). The exhaust is difficult to duplicate on our cars because the old muscle cars had frames that made dual exhaust easier to tuck up into - our cars are unibody, and duals = reduced ground clearance. Camshaft overlap has to be guarded because of the negative effect it produces on the oxygen sensor feedback to the computer. You can get a little bit of it, but go overboard and you'll confuse the heck out of the computer.

My personal opinion: You're best off getting used to what our cars sound like when they're put together properly to perform well. It ain't gonna be "that old muscle car rumble", but the rumble that produced 13-sec 1/4-mile timeslips and 8 mpg in the 60's and 70's doesn't hold a candle to our current capability of 13-sec timeslips and 15+ mpg - even if you miss that old rumble.

In my opinion...