Preparing your Shoulder Pads

You can use all manner of things to affix your new tire shoulder pad to you should pads, but first you have to get your shoulder pads ready. This usually means removing one or more plates from the existing should area to fit your new tire piece. I found just grounding the rivet heads off and punching the shaft of the rivet through was quick and easy. You -will- mar the plastic parts you want to keep, so don't get overzealous with the grinder. Just grind enough to get rid of the rivet head and let you punch the rest though (you can use a nail set for this if you have one.. else just a nail would work). Keep in mind you probably want to retain the strapping from the piece you are removing. This will give you an easy way of attaching your new tire armor to the pads.

I also went ahead did a few other things at this point:

• Stripped down the football pads, which meant: removing the cloth side straps, the interior/under padding , and taping up the hinges for the side straps. The hinges were a bit rusty, so I wanted to keep that appearance.
• Since the side straps were made of white cloth, I gave them a quick bath in some watered down black cloth dye and hung them up to drip-dry. Remember do to this outside. This gave the formerly white cloth a more dingy dark gray / light black appearance which is what I was looking for.
• Base-coated the whole plastic section of the pads. If you have Velcro inside to attach the cloth patting, be sure to NOT spray paint it. You still want it to work.
• After the base coat was dried, went over the exterior with black spray paint.
• I then took something with a sharp corner (I believe I used the claw side of a claw hammer) and hit the outside of the pads a few times. This was done to help give it character.
• Do a few more layers of black spray paint on the plastic parts.
• I did a light dusting layer of black spray paint on the outward facing side of the under padding. They were originally a dark bluish color, and that wouldn't work for what I was doing. So I needed to darken them up.
• The original string that laced up the front was in pretty bad shape, so I replaced it with a black boot lace from an old pair of boots.

Attaching the Tire

Re-using the existing straps, using a sharpie, mark the inside of the tire where the holes in the straps are. Then drill out holes in the tire, remember to use a slightly over-sized drill bit. After you drill out these holes, you probably to use a utility knife to remove the excess rubber bits from around the edge of the hole.
You'll notice in the photograph I used what is called an exterior tooth lock washer. I have these on both sides of the tire. They are nice because the teeth will help bite into the rubber of the tire and help secure the bolt. You should also use large flat washers to help prevent you from pulling the bolt through the tire. Also be sure to not over-tighten, remember that the natural elasticity of the tire material will help keep pressure on the nut, thus keeping it firmly in place.

Finishing Touches

Now is a good time to personalize your armor.

I decided that since these pads ride pretty high, I needed something to 'help protect my back'.. which meant just something that would extend a bit lower. To that end, I took drilled some holes in the back of the pads and attached some short sections of chain. With standard thin chain, you can just use some bolt cutters to clip though one side of the link. Then take some pliers and twist open the link, run it through the hole you created, and twist it back to normal shape.
I also used some left over links to create an additional horizontal row, giving the chain a sort of net or mesh appearance.

If you have any bits of automobiles or any sort of road side debris, go ahead and stick it on there. Also you can do things like add fake hair, doll heads, and anything else that might survive the nuclear holocaust or a scavenger might use for some weird reason.

Congratulations!

At this point you should have a basic understand of how to put together your set of shoulder-pad tire armor, but don't stop there, you probably have more then half a tire left!

You can some simpler things like basic tire thigh-guards fairly quick and easily, and attach them to a study belt. Dress it up with a codpiece and you got a minimal set of armor for the post-apocolyptic warrior.

One last very important part of your armor are accessories. Perhaps a respirator, an ammo bandoleer, some improvised weapons, and anything else that would fit. Got some baseball catcher shin pads you don't want anymore? Perfect! Just dirty them up and rock and roll.

You can discuss tire armor and other costuming in our forums