Jake with Tim
Hello Jake and Tim! Please tell us all about yourselves and how long you have been working together.
We have been working together now for about 3 months.
Jake loves all things to do with cars – working on cars, looking at cars, playing video games of cars, driving in cars!
It’s the most funny thing when we are doing something simple, like walking down the street, and Jake sees or hears a hot car – he stops what he’s doing, eyes light up and he gets fully engrossed in it. Saying things like, “Wow! Hot AU”, or “Hear the rumble on that”. It’s totally awesome, we always have a good laugh about it.
I’m the same, love cars. I have a twin turbo Subaru B4, and I go to many motor enthusiast events, like Hill Climbs, Drifting Days, Race Days. So we hit it off pretty well from the start.
I’m also an amateur mechanic and Jake loves to work on cars so we have spent a bit of time pulling engines and cars apart and looking at things like pistons and turbo’s and how they work.
I hear you have an exciting activity planner. Jake, what are some of your favourite things to do with Tim?
One of the main things was scheduling to work on cars from a mechanical perspective. We do this every second week.
Jake likes going for drives. We went 4WD’ing down near Mannum one week, that was fun. We also went to The Bend to watch and participate in a Drifting event.
Jake had a car that we were working on – together, we pulled the engine apart and have polished it up while starting to fix some of the issues it had, like the electric windows not working on the passenger side.
How did you come up with your schedule of activities?
We sat down together and discussed what Jake likes to do – we brainstormed all sorts of ideas!
Nothing was out of the question and nothing was impossible.
Once we had the list, we worked out what could be achieved short term and what needed a bit of planning to do, perhaps next year and jointly decided on where to start. We put it down as a schedule to help remind us of our plans.
What is the most satisfying thing you’ve achieved so far? Tell us how you did it!
We were able to go to a Car Drifting event at The Bend racetrack. Jake was able to get a passenger ride in some of the cars, with some pretty good drivers!
Luckily, I knew a few of the drivers going to the event, so I talked to them about getting a few rides, then chatted to the officials at the Drifting event to gain permission. All were more than happy to oblige, so we had a great day out riding in some really fast cars, going around corners sideways in a safe and controlled manner with great sounds … it was a lot of fun!
What are your next goals – big or small, we’d love to hear them!
Jake would like to learn how to drive.
Do you have anything coming up that you’re especially excited about?
We are planning on going fishing and kayaking soon, once the weather warms up a bit, and planning to go to Mallala Raceway and see an event there.
What barriers have you encountered while working together and how have you worked to remove them?
One of the main things Jake wanted to do was work on cars and learn how they worked. Initially, a place was organised to do this but it turned out not to be appropriate, so we needed to think about how else we could accomplish this goal. We were fortunate to able to use one of Jake’s mum’s cars to pull apart and put back together again, so I now pack up a heap of tools, take them to Jake’s place to work on the car (e.g. pull the head off, or work on the brakes or electrical systems) when that’s on our schedule.
We are in the process of reviewing this again as the car we were using is no longer available. We’ll need to find another option to achieve this, and I’m sure we will.
Thank you so much! What else would you love to share with us?
It’s been great working together to gain trust and build new skills.
Jake
