At Sunrise Transmissions, automotive service is all in the family. In today's inaugural edition of our transmission shop spotlight, we're featuring the Profeta family owned and operated Sunrise Transmissions shop in Islip, Long Island, New York. The shop has a long history of providing full-service transmission repairs with great results to satisfied customers and has trusted TransTec seal kits to help rebuild it right for over 20 years.
Sunrise Transmissions: The Family Business
Sunrise Transmissions has been locally owned and operated since 1974, serving all types of vehicles in the Islip Terrace area. Owner Frank Profeta has been in business for over 44 years, but Frank and his sons Rob, Tim, and John, have over 75 years of combined rebuilding experience between them.
The shop specializes in full-service transmission repair, including transmission, axle, and transfer case services. While the shop is open to all types of vehicles, one segment it especially succeeds in is the school bus market. As Frank says, "I do a lot of vehicles, and a lot of school buses. Kids have to go to school, and they can't get stuck. And the amount of comebacks we see is little to nothing. That's why I have all the major bus companies on the island right now."
The shop's broad spectrum of transmission services brings a steady stream of work into the shop, but the repair process is designed to serve every job and customer quickly and effectively. Partly because of the family values that hold a strong connection within the shop, Sunrise Transmissions offers exceptional service with a guarantee that gives all its customers faith and confidence. As the shop's website states: "We also guarantee all exchanged rebuilt transmissions and torque converters that we rebuild and install against faulty workmanship and defective materials for one year or 12,000 miles, whichever comes first. This includes all parts and labor at no extra charge. We even honor aftermarket warranties as well."
Additionally, unless extreme circumstances arise, most transmission repairs are in and out of the shop within an average of two to three days. That's the level of service that shows a true commitment to quality, to the community, and to the customer.
Partnership with the TransTec Brand
Approximately twenty years ago, the Sunrise Transmissions technicians were using a different brand of seal kits in their rebuilds, and the results were less than satisfactory. Tim Profeta struggled, at the time, to work with cheap, incomplete seal kits, ultimately leading to a much higher level of comebacks to the shop. His brother John, also a rebuilder, recalls lip seals that would shrink and break.
Frank described how the low quality of the other aftermarket kits impacted his business as a whole: "Rubber goods were cracking and shrinking, and then I have to do the job over again, and every time I have to do the job over again, it costs me."
The solution? Sunrise Transmissions switched to the TransTec brand as its primary seal kit provider and effectively eliminated these problems while significantly decreasing its comeback percentage to almost zero.
"When we use TransTec, we have all the stuff we need to rebuild the unit — that's our biggest concern, and the quality of it is good," says Frank. The shop's quick, 2-3 day turnaround for transmission repairs depends on the TransTec brand's ability to provide a 100% complete overhaul kit for any application in the shop. "When we need to overhaul a bus, the TransTec kit is complete with more lip seals than we even need to cover different years," John says, referring to the brand's ability to provide all parts necessary to service multiple variations of the same application in every overhaul kit.
With a TransTec kit on the bench, Tim sees a lot less of his time wasted.
"The benefits of having everything in my overhaul kit is that I dont have to leave one spot and everything’s there. It makes it so much easier than looking and researching and stuff that gets you out of your routine when you're rebuilding. When you have everything there, you just listen to music and rebuild."
The techs at Sunrise Transmissions also value the personal relationship the brand has taken the time to build with them over the years. When any kind of challenge arises, "We talk to a person; we dont talk to an automated machine," says John. The team also values the brand's willingness to take feedback and engage in two-way conversations with techs in order to further improve its already superior quality kits.
For Tim, using TransTec brand overhaul kits is one key to the shop's productivity and success. "TransTec is our one-stop shop," he says, "and if I wasn't confident, I’d be looking somewhere else, but I haven't in 20 years." John agrees that working with the TransTec brand improves the efficiency and reputation of the shop overall: "We were having a lot of comebacks with other products, and we can’t have any comebacks because they'll lose faith in us, so we put our faith in TransTec."
Tim sums it up this way: "I like to think that I put the best stuff in my products, and that’s why I use TransTec."
