We ended up going with a large sheet of plastic that used to be the screen of an old projection tv. Instead of getting rid of the tv, I guess we just broke it up into smaller pieces and packed them around the room so that they'd fit. This was last week and we were doing a lot of work on the trike, so I gave my roommate, Nick, creative control over designing the shape of a box to fit in the triangular region in front of the seat. He mocked up some nice cardboard templates for the sides of the box that we traced onto the TV screen cut out with the bandsaw.
Then we needed to fasten all the sides together in a lightweight and inexpensive fashion. We found some extra sheet metal odds and ends, and just bent those pieces to make the joints at the edges. I haven't had an application for rivets in a while, so I figured we'd give it a shot. It brought me back to my great childhood memories of hammering out coffee cans and riveting them to the body of our old truck to cover with bondo when holes rusted through the sides. I wish I had some pictures of those old projects with Dad for the blog, as they truly fit the theme of using junk to build stuff.
Eventually the box took shape and looked pretty good, but did take a while to assemble. It probably was not the most effective use of materials, but I mean it ended up working out. We also put a wooden base to line the inside on the bottom and so that we could mount it down on the trike.
In the end, it was a pain to make and we were sick of rivets. We still might go through and cover up some of the sheet metal and edges with bondo later just to fill in some gaps and smooth it all out, but for now, it works fine and all the necessary electronics fit on the inside.
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