After getting a couple of barrel bolt/sliding latches and a dryer vent I was able to move on to the next stage in the construction of the Mustang Chicken Coupe. First thing I did was line up the latches at the middle of each door and from there was able to mark and drill a hole in the support pipe that I welded just behind the trunk lid and right above the tops of the doors. On one of the bolts because the door was not as lined up with the support pipe as the other side, I had to weld the bolt body where it overlapped above the top of the door. I was only able to use two of the screw holes to spot weld the piece in place so I had to put welds along the edges of the bolt body to fully secure it. I also had to cut a small piece of the trunk lid to accommodate that protruding portion of the bolt body when the door was opened. The pics show everything.
On the right door the latch I had was a bit smaller and the support pipe was lined up better so I was able to use all four screw holes to spot weld the piece to the top of the door. I still did welds along the outer edges for extra support. Because the top of the door was closer to the support pipe and the barrel bolt body was lined up evenly with the top of the door, I didn't have to remove any metal from the trunk lid. Guess you can't win em all when fabricating shit, especially with rusty jacked up shit like this. With the nest area doors secured I moved on to the vent/fan assembly. This assembly will consist of a dryer vent with some metal tube attached and a large computer/power cabinet ventilation fan. First thing I had to do was take the metal tube portion of the dryer vent and trace a circle on the window panel on the driver's door. From there I used the die grinder, which since its disc was already worn down, allowed me to cut a decent circle by just cutting a series of cuts around the circle. With the circle cut out of the door, I then took the dryer vent body and removed the metal tube from the vent. I then drilled four holes in the window panel and secured the dryer vent to the panel with screws/nuts. I took the metal tube and drew lines to make four tabs evenly spaced around the tube, a few inches from the end that snaps into the dryer vent body. I cut the excess metal tube off and then cut along the lines to expose the tabs. I bent these tabs out for my next step. The next step was fitting the fan where its bolt holes line up with at least two of the tabs. I was able to achieve this goal, getting the two opposite tabs lined up with the two opposite screw holes in the fan. I secured the fan to these tabs with more screws/nuts. From here I took some duct tape and used it to cover the gaps that were present between the fan and the metal tube. With that I snapped the metal tube back in to the dryer vent body. Time for the wiring. Next was the power supply for the fan. I dug out a 12v power supply I saved from a long dead router, rated for 12v at 1 amp. I plugged it into the outlet and routed the wires over towards the fan to see if I needed extra wire to complete the connection. Of course I did need a little extra wire so after digging out a little bit of 2 conductor wire from my wire stash, I soldered the wires together, covering them with heat shrink tubing. I wire tied the wire to a few spots along its route to keep it all neat and secured. I also plugged up the heater that I used in the dog's house to verify it'll fit with the fan power supply. The last thing I did was prop open the louvers on the dryer vent. Even with the fan running there wasn't enough pressure to push open the louvers. I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head to prop the little plastic flaps open so I just used some of the screws from the barrel bolt. I just drilled three holes on one side just under the open flaps so when I put the screws in place, they kept the louvers open at about 45 degrees angle. With that the fan will be able to move air out in a decent manner and still keep rain from just making its way in if I just had an open hole with the fan on it. With all of that done, all that's really left is to install a cooling fan in the brooder area/engine bay. That'll probably be done by cutting a hole in the firewall where I'll attach another computer fan and hooking it up to another small power supply that I'll plug up to the outlet in that area. With that, there really isn't much else to do other than move the car into its final resting place and hook up the utilities in a more permanent manner before putting mulch and birds within.
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