How to get a discontinued car part designed, then 3D printed or machined
When a trim clip, knob, bezel or bracket for an older car is no longer made, the hard part is rarely the printing. It is the design: someone has to measure the old part and turn it into a file a printer or a machine shop can use. This guide shows how to pay a maker to do that through a bounty, and where the limits are.
Start with what the part is
The parts people reproduce well are trim, interior and accessory pieces that carry no load: clips, knobs, bezels, cup holders, covers and light brackets. Coverage of this niche, such as Hackaday's write-up on printing hard-to-find vintage vehicle parts and small dedicated shops like HV3DWorks, centres on exactly those. What our research did not find is a marketplace that connects that demand to a paid designer, which is the gap this site exists to fill.
If the part is a brake, steering or suspension component, or anything load-bearing, a printed copy is the wrong answer. This marketplace treats it that way (see the safety section below).
What to put in the bounty
A maker can only design what they can measure. A good bounty includes:
- Photos of the part from several angles with a reference object in frame, such as a ruler or a coin, so the maker can scale the image. The MakeBounty app guides you through this with the camera.
- Make, model and year, and where the part sits in the car.
- The measurements you can take yourself, and which faces mate with other parts.
- What you want back: a printable STL or 3MF, a STEP file a machine shop can quote from, or both.
- The amount you are offering.
How the money works
Posting a bounty is free. Other owners of the same car can pledge toward it, so the cost is shared. Nobody is charged when they pledge. When a maker claims the bounty, submits a solution and you accept it, each pledge is charged directly to the maker's Stripe account with application_fee_amount set to 0, so the platform takes 0%. Stripe's own processing fee is the only deduction. See pricing.
If nobody solves it, you can cancel an unfulfilled bounty. Every open pledge is released and nothing is charged.
Turning the file into a part
The result is a design file under the licence the maker chose. You can print it yourself, or take a STEP file to a local machine shop or an online manufacturing service. Print-on-demand fulfilment through this site is not live yet, so plan on making the part yourself or through a shop you pick.
Safety-critical parts are gated
A solution counts as safety-critical if the maker declares it, or if its category, title or description names things like brakes, steering, suspension or load-bearing use. Such a solution cannot be confirmed for print-on-demand ordering without a liability acknowledgment recorded on that specific order. Automotive solutions must carry an explicit yes-or-no safety declaration; the default is not accepted.
If the result does not fit
You can open a dispute within 14 days of accepting a solution. The platform never holds bounty money. A pledge only saves a payment method with Stripe, and the charge at acceptance goes straight to the solver's Stripe account. That makes a dispute a mediated record reviewed by a person, not a guaranteed refund, so give the maker exact measurements up front. The terms are in the terms of service.
What is live today, and what is not
This is a young marketplace, so here is exactly where it stands. Bounties are posted, pledged to and accepted in the MakeBounty app, backed by the same API this site uses. Each bounty and each solution has a public page here. Catalogue checkout with the published split is built in the API; a purchase control on the public solution page is not live yet. Print-on-demand fulfilment is not live yet either: today you receive design files, not a manufactured part.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay someone to design a replacement for a discontinued car part?
Yes. Post a bounty with photos and measurements of the part. A maker claims it, designs the file and submits a solution. When you accept it, your payment goes directly to the maker through Stripe with a 0% platform fee.
Will this site print and ship the part to me?
Not today. Print-on-demand fulfilment is not live. You receive the design files and can print them yourself or take them to a machine shop or manufacturing service you choose.
Can I get a brake or suspension part made this way?
Solutions flagged as safety-critical are gated: they cannot be confirmed for print-on-demand ordering without an explicit liability acknowledgment, and automotive solutions must declare whether they are safety-critical. A printed copy of a load-bearing part is generally the wrong answer.
What happens if the part does not fit?
You can file a dispute within 14 days of accepting the solution. The platform does not hold bounty money, so a dispute is a mediated record reviewed by a person rather than a guaranteed refund.
Sources
- Hackaday: 3D printing hard-to-find vintage vehicle parts (accessed 2026-09-16)
- HV3DWorks (accessed 2026-09-16)
Fees are published in full on the pricing page. Operated by Heron Networks LLC.