As is always the case with things, things break. Sometimes they break at the most inconvenient time, then sometimes the thing that breaks is something that can't necessarily be repaired easily, if at all. Such is the case with the horn on the Tracker. As was the case with the old Tracker, the horn button is built into the airbag assembly and is not going to just be replaced like any other switch. We're not exactly going to buy a whole airbag just to replace the switch either. As was the case with the old Tracker, a switch was rigged up to power the horn in place of the button on the airbag at the middle of the steering wheel. When I scrapped the old Tracker, I pulled several parts from the vehicle. One of those pieces was the old horn button I installed to repair that broken horn switch. I saved this just in case I would need to make this makeshift repair once again. Well here we are once again. I drilled a hole in a small panel piece that fills one of the spots that would've been used for a factory switch for some other accessory. The switch went in the hole and was secured with a nut. The next thing was to run a couple wires through the firewall to where the horn is located. I cut the wire that was feeding the horns, then removed the long length of wire that was connected to the plug on the passenger side of the engine bay. I removed a plastic plug from a hole in the firewall and drilled a small hole in the middle of it to run the wires through. One wire was short and spliced to the wire for the horns and capped with a narrow female terminal to be plugged to a terminal on the switch. The other wire was capped with another narrow female terminal and plugged to the other terminal on the switch and with both wires run through the hole in the plastic cap, the second wire was routed along the top of the firewall over to the battery. From here the end of the wire was terminated with an inline fuse and capped with a large ring terminal, which would be connected to the battery terminal directly. I ended up drilling several small holes along this rubber cap piece, in order to use zip ties to hold the wire, recessed inside the cap piece along the top of the lip over the firewall. I removed the bolt from the battery terminal, inserting it through the ring terminal and putting the whole works back onto the battery terminal, tightening everything up. With that, the horn had its own separate circuit and was working as designed. The battery terminal with the ring terminal and inline fuse hooked up, along with the power feed wire routed along the weather stripping piece, secured with zip ties through drilled holes. All of this is temporary of course. If there's a chance of repairing the original problem, then this arrangement wouldn't be needed anymore. At the same time, we had another unexpected surprise. After hearing sounds coming from under the house of chickens, baby chickens, we went to investigate, only to find a hen with several chicks nestled inside the insulation. Having made its way in from an open spot in the insulation sheeting, the hen laid a nest and hatched several chicks. Well, we had to slide under the house and cut away more of the already messed up insulation layer to access the chickens, with the hen being a dissenting participant in this ordeal. Once the chicks were recovered, we had to set up another brooder box so we can raise these birds to maturity to add to the flock. We have the incubator set up with even more eggs that appear to have been fertilized and were being set on by another hen. We'll see how those eggs turn out as well. Maybe we'll end up with more birds. If that batch hatches, we'll definitely have a good batch of birds for this year without even having to buy them, which is literally what this whole hobby is all about. Let's hope these birds keep up with the egg and bird production like the machines they are.
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