The Shoeing Begins

Team Shoebaru had a busy weekend starting to turn a Subaru into a…SHOEBARU!

Since we are all going at this somewhat blind there is a lot of trial and error as we go through the various stages on the build. As things progress we’ll be doing more updates with fun photos to keep everyone out there on the interwebs informed.

To get everyone on the same page, here is our inspiration :

First up was to get the “rubber” portions of the “shoe” painted black and white.

Next we had to get the fabric cut and glued to the vehicle.  This took some figuring out on our part in regards to the best way to attach the fabric.  We’re using Liquid Nails which basically gets everywhere and is difficult to get off of your skin.  On top of that, having to deal with wind and gluing a sheet of fabric isn’t the easiest either!

After getting a few panels on we needed to figure out the layout and placement of pieces on the hood.  This required laying out fabric, laces, and eyelets…then measuring…arguing some, and then repeat.  In the end, we came up with what think is a solid layout both visually and structurally.

As we were pulling the “eyelets” that we had custom cut for us away from the rest of the aluminum sheet, an amazing discovery was made.  In between the cut circles were throwing start shaped pieces of aluminum.  Needless to say, upon realizing this, Saturday was a wash as we spent the remaining 14 hours of the day playing with them.

We took a little time in the end to get started on the stereo system.  For those of you that don’t know, this is a sore point for me in regards to my 2009 Mongol Rally experience.  We had spent countless hours getting our stereo system ready to go and (I am not exaggerating here) as we were driving to the start line (which is about 1 mile from our campsite from the night before), our stereo system broke.  The good news was that broke while we were blasting the them to “Team America.”  Due to cost and laziness, we decided not to try and fix it or replace it and went the rest of rally (i.e. ALL of the rally) without the ability to play music in the vehicle.  So, this is something that I want to make doubly sure is good to go.  How else can I listen to Toto’s “Africa” non-stop between the Suez Canal and Cape Town?

Stay tuned for more progress updates.  For now, here is a sneak peak at the plan for the front…