Early 2021 was the last rally that we competed in, what’s been happening since???

The last event, Forest Rally 2021 ended with some damage and bent suspension, all at the same time as buying a new place to live, which was at the time just vacant land.

The second half of 2021 was spent cleaning up and finishing our old place – no time like when you move out to finish all of those little jobs that you were ‘getting too’.

Add to that needing to get a shed and house build, so that we had somewhere to move into and most importantly I had somewhere to put all of my stuff from the shed.

Many long days and nights to get all of the earthworks setup for the shed pad consumed all of my time until early December, when the pad went down. Now to just wait until the shed parts arrived (which was supposed to be October, but it was December at this point and it was being delivered “soon”.

Focus then went back to the current house and getting it all nice for selling, packing up the shed, etc etc. No time or energy left to start bodywork on a racecar.

It was now Feb 6th 2022, and finally the shed components were delivered. As you would expect, we had one of the hotest summers in recent years at that time – 42 degrees on a white concrete slab moving around pecices of metal was no fun at all – so much of the work happened from 4pm until midnight or later – luckily as we are now so remote I could make a bit of noise without upsetting them.

By the second of March I had the main frame mostly completed (working on it after work and on the weekend).

March 22 and most of the roof was completed, and some of the walls sheeted, and it was time to clear out the old shed.

The birthplace of the S15 was now just an empty space, with only history remaining.

At this point my boy was 12 and the new block gave him a place to play, so as $500 bunky was added to the fleet. He already had Gerold (a blue Pulsar, auto) where I wanted him to be able to learn left foot braking, and as with young kids, he picked it up so quick that it was soon time for a manual transmission car.

By April the shed was roughly closed in, so some of my focus could finally start to move to other things, like taking my boy to do some Khancross events.

After a couple of events in ‘Gerold’, it was time to move up from the auto trans, to a manual. As usual with this kid, it took him less than an hour to transistion to the manual, left foot braking, and moving his feet across all three pedals like he had been doing it his whole life.

The work on shed, creating fencing and structure for animals and starting a new motorsport adventure coninued throughout 2023. My car still sat there in the corner gathering dust and spiders webs.

It wasn’t long before he won a couple of Khanascross events, even with a field full of adults.

During this time, it was looking like he also wanted to rally – and I found a WRX for cheap that had a ‘dead’ motor after a broken timing belt.

The aim was to build it as a FWD non turbo, but with all of the WRX brakes and suspension, so he could turn it into a 4WD after a few years with just a motor and GBox change.

There was no plan to use this for some time, but Jun 18th things changed.

Until this point, I was required to sit with him by the rules, but he was now old enough to go by himself. First run of the day I sat with him, on his second run he was going solo. About 1/4 way through the run a drive shaft broke, leaving him stranded out there. He did the right things, just rolled to the side of the track and waited for them to come and tow him back.

Huge thanks to Cam and Brent for letting him finish the event in their car.

The next week, we found it really hard to find a driveshaft for it and the next Khanacross was only 2 weeks away. Cody wanted to get the WRX going, but I explained that when a timing belt goes then 99% of the time it will have bent valves in these engines. Rang a couple of people that know more about the EJ20 than me, and they all had the same oppinion.

He didn’t really care, and wanted to try it anyway.

When we dug into it, it was almost worse – the bolt hoding a cam sproket had broken off. I was even less convinced that this engine will ever run again.

I checked the positions of the valves, and they were all in the shut position. Turned it over by hand, and all cylinders had good and similar compression – at least as much as you can tell when turning it over with hand tools. I was very suprised, but it did prove that it was worth at least putting it back together to see.

I got the parts that we needed from some friends, and we put it all back together, he learnt how to do the timing on these engines, and we got it together enough to see what would happen.

Flicked the key and the thing started and ran nice and smoothly. We put the radiator etc back in it and we took it out of the shed for a quick drive around our paddock, let it warm up, no overheating. It had good power, everything felt really good. I have no idea how he got that lucky.

We quickly got together some 15 inch rims, slapped on some old rally tyres, got a new cam belt, tensioner, water pump, seals and all the other bits in that area. Slapped a fuel pump in it for safety and we went to his next Khanacross.

If memory serves, I think he won this event – first time out in a 4WD…. With only some minor pointers from me, it was amazing for me to see how quickly he adapted from the FWD to the 4WD, maily around having a far less effective handbrake and needing to move the car around more to turn it.

August, another event, another 1st place.

In September dislocated my finger, so that set me back a bit, as it was my right hand. Come Dec and an appointment as my usual doc, she wanted to see it and at that time I had very limited movement of that finger. This started another 3-4 months of finger being strapped and physio to get the movement back – When you go to hospital and they tell you to just strap it for a bit, make sure you go and see someone who knows more about it, as in my case I had done a lot of tendon damage that would not have healed on its own!

A couple more events for him finsihed off the year.

With his events over for the year, and me with a touch of motivation, I did spent one night hammering out and removing all of the dead bodywork in the rear of the S15. Got it prepped to accept some new parts on all of the factory part joining locations.

It was post this that the above docs appointment was, so within days of this my hand was all strapped back up and using a grinder was not very difficult.

End of Jan 2024 we had a localised severe storm rip through, pulling down a bunch of trees all over the place.

Still with a strapped hand, the next two months were spent on most weekends clearing up all of the mess.

Before I knew it we were in July 2024. Cody was also doing very well at Baseball, and his focus had turned from car events to Baseball – both being on the same day on the weekends there was no way to do both.

November 2024 and there was another Khanacross on, the boy had baseball. I was getting the itch back so I entered myself into the event and took his WRX. I had a really good day, and it reminded me of what I was missing. I was very content with him competing and me just helping him and watching, but with his focus being baseball and no events this year, I had lost this part of me.

Blink again it was Feb 2025. Another freak storm.

Somehow no ducks or chicken were lost, but the same could not be said for there homes.

It taken a good 5 months to rebuild everything, and even today its not totally finsihed yet, but they are safe from foxes and eagles both day and night.

Add in another 100 mini projects around the place and 2021 until now has disappeared in a flash.

June 2025. Baseball and a Khanacross did not overlap for the first time in 18 months, we we entered an event. This time we both entered in his car.

After test 1, I made sure I rubbed it in that I beat him. This was because I know its been 18 months for him since he did an event, and this first test would be the slowest that he would be all day. As I only beat him by a few tenths, I also knew this was the last time that I would beat him today, or maybe ever.

I did manage to win one more test later in the day, but he won the other 6 and beat me fair and square. So it was Joss 1st and 2nd, with the little man getting the spoils. I am really pround of how he drove, hard but with almost no mistakes, fast but in control. I tried all that I could, and it was not enough – he can just drive a 4wd car better than me on these tracks. A very proud dad.

And that completes the story from then until now – The s15’s comeback can now begin.