Now that the utilities are taken care of on the S10 Ranger Chicken Coop, the next order of business, albeit a small order, is putting roosting posts in the cab. Just like in the Toyota Chicken Truck, I took a couple of conduit pipes and welded them up longitudinal, front to back, since one of the doors on the truck are being used, I wouldn't have been able to go laterally. As before, I put two pipes in place, welding them up at the back of the cab just below the rear window and against the mounting metal for the dash (which is gone). With that small order of business out of the way I moved on to building the bed cover. Again, just like on the Toyota Chicken Truck, I used conduit to make a frame first. I used the pipe bender to bend the pipes to get the contours matched up to the contours of the cab sides and roof. This way when the sheet metal is laid down it will match up to the back of the cab. I was able to get the three ribs (front, middle and back) bent up pretty good where I didn't have to cut the section in half and trim it down then re-weld it back. I welded the three ribs to the top of the bed. The next thing to go up were the pipes to link the ribs together. These were welded near where the bends start on each side of each rib. It's these pipes that will support the overall structure of the bed cover and provide an attachment point for the self tapping screws that will hold the corrugated sheet metal to the structure. With the overall frame done, it was time for the sheet metal. Out of all the pieces of corrugated sheet metal I still had on hand I only had a couple sheets that were long enough to reach from front to back of the bed. The rest of them were able to reach 3/4 of the way to the back. Because of this, I saved the long pieces for the top. For the sides I attached the 3/4 length pieces from the front to back then cut some shorter pieces that I had to fill the gap from the end of the first piece to the last rib in the back of the bed. While I was able to screw the back of the shorter pieces to the rib, I had to use the self tapping screws to go between the overlapping ends of the sheet metal just holding them together by themselves, no pipe base to hold the screws. Because of this I did put extra screws through to the pipe where applicable. For the right side I had to cut a slit from the bottom of the piece of sheet metal then cut a small square about 1/4 of the way up to accommodate the pipe fittings coming out of the bucket reservoir. With the two sides taken care of with the shorter pieces of sheet metal I put the longer pieces on top, securing them in place with the self tapping screws. After securing the sheet metal to the roof I trimmed down the excess, getting everything flush at the back. With that, the bed cover as a whole was completed, all sheet metal was laid down, screwed securely. The only thing left is to make a hatch for the rear of the bed. Since I didn't have a tailgate for the bed the hatch would pretty much be a full size hatch from top to bottom. I plan on making the hatch hinge at the bottom since the whole structure is on the ground. If I make the hatch hinge at the top, I would have to have something to either hold the hatch upright or hinge it in a way where I could fold the whole hatch over the top of the bed cover. By hinging it at the bottom, the hatch will lay on the ground, serving as a ramp for the birds to be able to walk up into the bed of the structure. To help make this better I planned on installing a sheet metal skin on the portion of the hatch that would be where the tailgate would be. The portion that angles up to a narrower top would have chicken wire installed. The idea is to have a hatch that mimics a tailgate and window setup like on a normal truck with a camper shell except its all one piece. Once this is done the S10 Chicken Truck will be complete.
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