The next installment in the Mustang Chicken Coupe project is getting the power online in the car as well as getting the air circulation fan in the brooder section hooked up. I had to repair the power cable that was pulled free when I moved the car into the chicken yard in the days past. I also had to dig up a power supply to hook up to the fan in the brooder. Starting with the power cable, I ended up just splicing a length of cable with a plug back into the short length of cable coming from the outlet box in the cab. Some solder and electrical tape made this repair pretty fast and in no time I had the plug routed out through the hole in the floor where the water line is also routed. Wire ties secure the cable in place to keep things nice and neat. As for the brooder fan, I ran into an interesting issue. The heater that I was planning on using in the brooder section was a little larger than I took into account and if I plug it up to the outlet, it would have to be plugged up to the top outlet, and even then it would still make contact with the floor due to its size. Because of this, I ended up having to plug the power supply to the inside outlet, in the cab. At least until I can resolve the heater issue in the brooder. Hopefully I'll be able to find a smaller heater that will plug into the lower outlet in the brooder while still allowing me to plug the power supply into the top outlet. I routed a little extra wire from the power supply through the firewall to the fan, hooking everything up. With the two fan power supplies hooked up in the cab, I was able to get the brooder fan online as intended. But now another issue was brought to light. The idea that the fan has no screen or cover will be a problem for the dumb little baby birds that will be just as likely to get decapitated by sticking their beaks into the whirring fan being nosy as some other foreign object would end up getting stuck in the fan. I had to figure out something with this. I had to figure out what to put in front of the fan to keep it shielded from the baby birds while still allowing proper airflow. After looking around the shop and scrap piles I found the most unlikely thing to use for this problem. The dashboard from the same 73 Mustang that is now a chicken coop had a speaker cover on it that with the way it was made, looked like the perfect fit for a cover for the fan. The cover/panel is perforated with holes and has four mounting tabs that would allow me to mount the panel over the fan close enough to keep anything or any bird from accessing the fan while still allowing proper airflow. I was able to use two of the tabs to mount the panel at the top of the fan and one of the bottom tabs met with the firewall just right to allow for mounting. Self tapping screws made sure the whole piece was securely mounted. With that, the fan was ready for service so the baby birds can have proper ventilation during these hot days. The last things to do to the car is to make a ramp for the nesting area and set up a roosting post for the cab area. I also have to make a window cover that I can move up and down when it rains to keep water from getting blown into the cab. With that, we can move in its first set of residents, some almost fully grown birds that are currently in the chicken tractors which are now crowded due to their increasing size.
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