I am not sure if I am too late, since I only saw this thread today. Likewise I am not really sure how practical the following plans are, but I came across them today when I was reading something else and it made me think of this thread:
http://books.google.com/books?id=e9YDAA ... &q&f=falseThe author of the article in question even suggested that the tire dummy in question would end up being quite useful as far as kicks were concerned. That seems to be in agreement with what some of the others around here had said about constructing one.
Frankly I would like to see what you came up with, though I realize that sharing some photographs might be a little awkward. If I were the one who was so lucky to have some extra tires I suppose I would want to avoid cutting them up if that were an option personally.
It gives less of an opportunity to really mess things up, which would probably be useful with the way that my projects have a tendency to not quite match the images in the manual if that makes any sense at all.