Prompted by a few cracked lenses on Frederic's car, over the last few days I've been reading a few online articles about manufacturing parts in resin.
I started off by looking at making replacement lamp lenses in amber and red tinted resin as I'm sure there would be a demand for these given that the side repeaters and rear light units are now so expensive, and the reversing light and fog light hard to come by.
The process seems relatively easy. You make a two piece mould in silicone RTV type material using a good component.
The material is not cheap but the most expensive aspect of the job is buying a vacuum pump and chamber to degas both the silicone for mould making and the resin for casting and also a pressure pot to ensure resin travels fully into the mould and ensure there are no cavities.
A trawl through ebay suggest's you could easily spend £500 before you make your first part.
I think it might be possible to make other components too like door spoons, handles, and the light units themselves.
There is no point in gearing up to do this if anyone in the club already knows a facility somewhere that might do this for us for mates rates.
Failing that might we "club" together and have a co-operative to manufacture and supply? i.e share the set up costs!