Can you afford $20-30 or so? If so, you can do a pretty good job painting the engine compartment and upper areas of the engine. It takes some time, cheap plastic sheeting to cover up large areas not to be painted (cover engine when you are doing the compartment and vica-versa) and some aluminum foil (easy to wrap around odd shapes such as the master cylinder, distributor, etc, use your imagination). Remove what you can such as the battery, distributor cap & ignition wires, coil, washer bottle, etc. Pull the wiring away from the apron and wrap that with the foil. It's amazing what some rattle-can + time can accomplish.
Good luck.