One can get a lot done when there is plenty of time to do it. Today is one of those days. Being off and able to work on things from morning til night allowed me to get a bunch of stuff done around the Homefront, with the Mustang Chicken Coupe being at the forefront. It all wasn't a smooth ride in the beginning though.
I had run out of welding wire and was luckily able to find some at Harbor Freight the day before so I had to start things off by reloading the welder. That didn't go well. For whatever reason or another the wire wouldn't feed all the way through the feed tube. I ended up disassembling the gun down to the bare feed tube, still no luck. Some kind of obstruction or internal damage must've been present inside the feed tube. Even though this wasn't a problem before, it was a problem now. Well to cut to the chase, I was getting fed up with this damn welder. The damned thing was getting on my nerves for a while now and I've been rolling with it but not today. All it took was for the roll of welding wire to want to try and unspool some to break that final thread. I grabbed that heavy welder and chucked it out of the car on the ground then grabbed the baby sledge hammer and beat the living shit out of that welder. Well that left me sans welder. So I had to send my #2 over to Lowe's to pick up another welder. We found one that is in the same class, a flux core, 120vac powered unit. So now, while waiting for the replacement welder I had to do something productive. That something was cutting and splitting more wood. I dragged out the splitter and the chainsaws and went to work. After a while I managed to split a good chunk of wood, enough so that I had to drag more pallets from the decaying scrap pallet pile to set down for the new stacks. Even though these pallets are shitty, they will do the job since they too can be used for firewood once cleared of the regular firewood. The welder that we ended up getting was a low $200 model that Lowe's carries. It's actually pretty cool. Its smaller than the old unit and much lighter. The only drawback is that being smaller means it can't accommodate the large 10lb wire rolls that the old unit used. While I was getting those wire rolls pretty cheap online, I did manage to find bulk deals on the 2lb wire rolls that this unit can accommodate so all is not lost. Along with the welder I also got the PVC 1/2" to 1/8" tees that I needed to install the new drinker cups in place. First thing I did do was try out the welder by installing the floor pipe for the 2nd section of floor then screwing down the sheet metal floor panels to cover the floor. The welder was used to lay a few burns in spots to fully secure the panels down. That welder is awesome. It lays down nice beads and even on the low setting it was able to more than burn through the sheet metal that I used. The old welder was hardly able to do that. After getting the 2nd section of floor done I moved on to the drinker cups. I assembled the multiple cup assemblies before gluing it all in. Everything went in smooth and easy. I hooked up the hose and even on the low setting the water pressure was still a little high that I had some hiccups that had to be ironed out and for some, weren't fully ironed out. The drinker cups do work but with the pressure in the water lines, had a couple of issues where a drinker cup popped loose or wouldn't fully shut off. I'm awaiting a pressure regulator with which to use to get the water pressure down to a level that'll allow the drinker cups to work as intended. Now back to the cab floor. I went ahead and welded in all of the floor support pipes for the entire floor so all I had to worry with is the sheet metal. With the new welder that went pretty fast. Since I used up most of the first batch of sheet metal with the exception of a patch I cut from an old car hood (which will be used in the nest box/trunk area since its got support braces still under it), I had to dig out some more pieces of scrap sheet metal that were large enough that I could cut a couple of pieces and cover a large area. Some of the sheet metal used for the floors was actually pieces cut from filing cabinets and their associated drawers. These panels were large enough that I was able to cover the whole middle section of floor with two pieces, one of them having to be cut short to fit the remaining space after installing the first piece. The rear section same thing. It just took two large pieces of sheet metal to cover that section. I screwed down the panels using the self tapping screws through both the remaining car metal and the pipes, and along with some welding, ensured that the sheet metal floor panels were nice and secured. All that was left at the end of the evening was a small section where the rear section rolls down towards the middle section. I'll just have to measure and cut a small piece of sheet metal to cover this section. Once I do fill in that remaining spot of metal its a matter of setting up the refuse chute, something I thought about putting in to allow for easy cleaning of shavings by just removing a panel to expose a chute in the floor where the shavings can be swept to said hole and down a chute under the car where a bucket will be staged to catch the shavings for later disposal. Along with that I still have to make a little ramp that will allow the chickens to walk up to the trunk area where they can go nest. This project is getting done pretty fast.
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