Celebrating a 40th anniversary

Hardyston — Pat Barrett has been making the wheels on the car go round and round for 40 years. Barrett, the owner of Level 10 Transmissions on Route 94, repairs and improves the link between a vehicle’s engine and the drive wheels.

Although he lives in Warwick, N.Y., now, it all began when he was a teenager living in New Milford, N.J., where he created a business he called North Jersey Transmission. “I started the business in 1972 ... at my mom’s house,” said Barrett. “I was 16 at the time.” He had to hire an 18-year-old to test drive the cars.

He started the business based on his training from Lincoln Technical School in Union. Barrett recognized that transmissions had room for improvement. Early transmissions were not electronically controlled but were mechanical/hydraulic devices using mechanical links to sense throttle setting, engine load and road speed. Hydraulic pressure acted on calibrated springs to open and close valves inside the valve body to change the gears. A torque converter replaced the manual clutch and allowed the engine to continue to run if the vehicle stopped moving.

“From the beginning everything with me was performance, tying to make things better,” said Barrett. “In the turbo 400 (the heavy duty GM transmission) there would be six check balls. I would only put two back.” The changes in the movement of the fluid improved the performance of the transmission.

Starting small Barrett had only a jack and jack stands and he removed and replaced transmissions lying on his back. He had a helper under the car.

“My mother had me when she was 46 years old,” said Barrett. That makes her about 62 at the time of her son's business venture. “She was helping me install transmissions. We didn’t have lifts at my mom’s house and she was underneath the car with me installing them.

With business on the rise he relocated in 1973.

“It was actually an old barn that they shoed horses in, in Ridgewood, on Broad Street,” Barrett said.

He sold the business in 1980 and opened Pat Barrett Transmissions in Westwood.

“In Westwood we were into performance improvements and developing products,” said Barrett. “In 1991 I decided to sell Pat Barrett Transmissions. I was going after the world market. The Internet was just coming on. I wanted to travel the world and sell to the world.”

Reaching out via the Net Barrett opened Level 10 Transmissions in 1991. He traveled through Russia, Ukraine and Middle Eastern countries developing transmissions.

“We did a lot of traveling,” said Barrett. “We started with a 10 by 10 area in my brother-in-law’s shop. It grew and grew and grew. Then we built this building. We’ll probably sell this building and expand again.”

Vehicle owners were modifying their engines to develop more torque and horsepower. Smaller, lighter and more reliable turbochargers allowed dramatic increases in engine power. “Anybody who turbocharged a vehicle, especially in the early '90s, could only run a manual shift (transmission) because they could not get the automatics to last,” Barrett said.

Barrett made a connection through Garrett Turbocharging in Australia. It was a natural match as Garrett turbocharger buyers needed Barrett’s transmission modifications if they wanted to use an automatic transmission.

“Automatic transmissions, at the time, were an American product,” said Barrett. “Any technology for automatic transmissions came from the USA. I lucked out with this connection. Our first big contract was going to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 1991.”

Always something to work on Barrett has found that most of the transmissions on the market are solidly built and generally well engineered, but they still have problems.

“We find quirks in transmissions,” he said. “Like the Audi 2000-2004. It is an engineering fault. Audi’s fix is six grand. Our fix is $698. It works every time, a 100 percent fix. We never advertised it. It is just word of mouth, but word of mouth on the Internet, and it just exploded.”

Some failures are common to a manufacturer and others are a matter of geography.

“Transmission failures are regional,” said Barrett. “Some failures happen only in this region and some happen in Florida, some happen in Canada.”

Software upgrades Transmissions have come a long way from the mechanical/hydraulic devices Barrett first started working on. The calibrated orifices, springs, linkages and check valves have been replaced by transmission control units, gathering information from sensors, controlling hydraulic pressures with a series of solenoid activated valves. Complex software makes the decision when and how an automatic transmission shifts.

“What we do differently is we can control the software,” said Barrett. It can be "a factory upgrade or we are going to tweak it ourselves.” Approximately 90 percent of the vehicles get a software change. "Besides fixing the particular quirk, it picks up the mileage.”

Web sites and chat rooms tout the unique services provided by Level 10 Transmissions and the shop ships repair kits and modification upgrades around the world.

Barrett recalled a Subaru valve body that was shipped to the shop from Singapore. Sometimes crates containing transmissions are delivered to the shop. Worldwide shipping services make that possible.

“It is no harder to pick up a transmission in Hamburg, Germany than Cincinnati, Ohio,” said Barrett.

Hands-on guy Barrett does not enjoy the office work needed for the far reaching business. He leaves the paperwork to his wife, Karen. Rebuilding a transmission with his own hands keeps him going.

“I jump out of bed to get to work,” said Barrett. Despite having three technicians working in the shop, including his son Shawn, Barrett still gets his hands dirty. “I still rebuild. I have two transmissions apart right now. That is my favorite part of the day.”

Transmissions keep the wheels on the cars going round and round and Barrett makes them go better and longer

“I enjoy it,” said Barrett. “I’m never going to retire.”

For more information visit www.levelten.com or call 973 827-1000.