Of the many places in the world that you would expect to find world-class racecar engineers, Kalamazoo may not be at the top of your list. However, after this weekend, Professional Awesome thinks it should be.
We met up with TRE’s Jon Ripple, an all-around cool dude and gearbox genius to pick up our newly refreshed and upgraded transmission and transfer case. As was the case with our last trip, Jon welcomed us into his shop and treated us to an incredibly in-depth discussion on the finer points of transmission technology and gave us a full walkthrough of our newly upgraded transmission. Never before have I met someone who is able instill such faith in their customers, Jon truly is a master of his trade.
While at TRE, our transmission was treated to a full replacement of the synchronizers and bearings, upgrading of the shift forks, upgrading to an Evolution IX spec first gear set, full gearset and case strengthening, and a multitude of other services.
Without a doubt, we have a transmission that is more than capable of handling the stresses of a full race season and we can’t wait to take it to the track!
Speaking of which, April 3rd and 4th will be Professional Awesome’s first test and tune weekend. That gives us nine weeks to build a race car… Looks like we’ll be busy!