A Second Life
The owner of RKL Diesel Performance, Ryan Lendefeld, is no stranger to transmissions. In fact, it is the one specialty that his shop is known for.
"My experience began when I was about 11 years old helping my dad build drag race transmissions," recalls Ryan.
Later in life, he got his professional start as master tech through Ford's Power Stroke division back in 1996. He then started his own shop near the turn of the century and since then has been refining his skills in the art of transmissions.
Our drive to RKL got us quite excited for the overhaul, and truthfully, it wasn't for the greatest of reasons. On the drive, the transmission was slipping often and also holding gears for some time at 3500 RPMs. We almost doubted if transmission could really be saved at all, but we were confident that it would soon be in the right hands at the RKL shop.
To get started, we first needed to pull the transmission out of the Honey Badger. With the experience of RKL behind us, removal took about 20 minutes. Once it was removed we put the transmission on a work bench and got to work on tearing it apart.
At this point in the process, we had to make sure we gave the transmission a good bath by washing the case and all the parts that we were going to reuse for the build. For what we had planned to do to the transmission this included most of the drums, gear sets and shafts.