yeah... tell me about it
Aaanyways,
while molding an engine might indeed be on the expensive side;
some simpler shape can be done in the homeshop for quite a bit cheaper I'd say;
fiberglassing isn't too complicated and you do not need tons of material..
I'd say roundabout 50 bucks or so max.
From what I'm seeing you can spit out a decent molding buck from styrofoam within minutes.
maybe a bit of filler for a smooth surface
And seeing what kind of caftsmanship there is in that trike so far..
I bet you can build your own vacuum table within a few hours from materials you have laying around,
(nothing but a low profile wooden box with a vac port on one side and tons of drilled holes on top)
and while it's a bit uncomfortable;
a heat gun and a thin sheet of plastic is essentially all you need then
apart from patience..
and you made your own vacuum formed custom part with a day or two
for maybe 30 dollars in materials.
I wish Ozfab would still be around,
he'd tell you that all you need is a ball peen hammer to whack your straight aluminium plate into whatever shape you want..
Frankly I doubt I could.. but he claimed it's easy (coachbuilder he is.. me isn't
)
And if you want to stick with the engine lookalike..
twice the amount of fiberglass and epoxy (one for the mold, one for the part)
and a pot of vaseline as a mold release (but yeah.. that'd be a hundred bucks... already
)
Oh.. you don't happen to have a 3d printer, have you? if you're lucky you find that enigne as an stl file..
then all you'd need is to sit and watch the printer do it's thing (and maybe a spool of filament)
'sid