I just registered a Intermeccanica roadster in California. Is there any mount option for a front license plate that that isn’t totally aesthetically unappealing? With another car I was once ticketed for not having a front plate.
I searched this site and googled around on the web but found nothing that wasn’t ugly.
Jim
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@aircooled Bruce has an option that is completely hidden and also allows the plate to be removed for car shows and other events.
There was one a few years ago that was an electrically controlled device that put the plate under the from bumper and moved it into the proper place when need be.
I'm obviously very cheap, a tight wad and old school, a simple aluminum bracket bolted to the underside of the bumper with two machine screws & Ny-Loc wing nuts. $ 3.00 gets it done.
Back in 2005 (when I was still following stupid rules), I put a front plate on my car. It's just a chrome frame with the top two screws going right into the deco trim.
I would not in 100 years do it again nor worry about how to comply in a less offensive way. I would not spend $3 on hardware or $130 for a motorized kit.
Neither Jeanie's minivan, nor my Transit Connect work trucklet have a front plate. The limo and the pickup have them, but that's because they're part of the ethos. The limo plates make a statement, and the pickup has a spot where the plate needs to go.
"No front plate" is a ticket with no points against your record. As such, the fine is just a tax for not screwing up the front of your car. It's a tax I'm willing to pay.
When complying is worse than the punishment for non-compliance, the path forward seems pretty clear to me.
Some of you new guys may not know about my QCLPB (quick change license plate bracket). They are $60.00 plus shipping. (free shipping if SOC member) Here's what they look like.
The slide tubes are "O" ring sealed to keep water out and create a friction lock to keep the plate in place. A drain hole is in the bottom just in case. They have been on the market in the US and Europe for nearly 5 years now with no negative feedback.
Air-cooled Bruce
No front plate in Calif. gets close to $60 by the time you jump thru the hoops. That doesn't include the time to take time off to take your car down the the local constabulary to have them "inspect it" and sign off on it. Your mileage may vary ? Bruce
@aircooled posted:No front plate in Calif. gets close to $60 by the time you jump thru the hoops. That doesn't include the time to take time off to take your car down the the local constabulary to have them "inspect it" and sign off on it. Your mileage may vary ? Bruce
That's a bargain. I think it's $78 here.
I'll pay it.
I have been driving my speedster(s) since 2012 and have only been pulled over once, no ticket issued. Most cops dig the cars and understand you don’t want to add a plate where there is no mount. I do keep it in the car just in case.
Yes, a front plate on a Speedster is a real annoyance. You either 'comply' with the law, and mess up the front of the car, or take Stan's approach and be ready to pay the 'tax'.
I doubt most officers of the law are going to jump all over you for not wanting to ruin the front of your car, but they have the right so to do...
Or, you find a legal loophole. My car is registered as a 1956 in NY.
In NY, you can use YOM plates, if you can find them.
In 1955 and 1956 ONLY, NY had only one plate. I simply found one on ebay, got it checked to see if I could use it with the Custom Plate Bureau, and purchased it. I got it done at least 4 years ago.
Life is good.
@DannyP posted:Or, you find a legal loophole. My car is registered as a 1956 in NY.
In NY, you can use YOM plates, if you can find them.
In 1955 and 1956 ONLY, NY had only one plate. I simply found one on ebay, got it checked to see if I could use it with the Custom Plate Bureau, and purchased it. I got it done at least 4 years ago.
Life is good.
As I’ve posted previously, the law in Utah references something like “if there were provisions for it from the factory.” I have front plates on my “regular cars.” The Spyder and the 550 had “no provisions from the factory.” (I made sure when the body shop replaced the front clip on my 968 that they didn’t drill the holes for the front plate bracket.
Thats cool about NYS. I think the only years UT issued a single plate was during the war. It makes pairs of plates extremely expensive, too. You can only register a YOM plate if you have both. Single plates are $5-$25. Pairs are several hundred, especially earlier than 1972, when Utah stopped issuing new colored plates every year.
@Joe Fortino posted:I have been driving my speedster(s) since 2012 and have only been pulled over once, no ticket issued. Most cops dig the cars and understand you don’t want to add a plate where there is no mount. I do keep it in the car just in case.
I’ve been a scofflaw most of my life WRT front plates and I’ve never been stopped or issued a citation for it. I worried, a little bit, when I drove my 968 in NY, but I never had a problem.
I used it as an excuse to pull over people I had just criminally profiled but never issued any tickets for it. Unless their attitude requested it.
@aircooled @DannyP this is california..so don't get me started ... all bets are off on which laws the cops want to enforce at any given time,,,if they wanted to write tickets at these car guy events for no front plate... (technically , it's still the law)...this state could pay off it's insane debt and fix it's major issues (sarcasm)...but i digress..bruce's solution is very neat and practical...i went with the AMAZON (just GOOGLE hidden license plate) option mentioned by dannyp...only i went without the little motor that the corvette guys love and @Robert M....for the record....
i have been pulled over twice by cops that just wanna look at my car...so there's that 
....here is my before /after photos...i usually just leave it up since it's a billboard for my car 
happy motoring 
Getting a ticket can and does happen. As Robert says, it's a good, legal "profile" approach to stopping someone. Usually it's up to you if he writes the ticket when everything is "said and done". Me ? I hate interruptions when I'm on my way somewhere and it can be hazardous where you stop to chat. Hence.....I wear a front plate..........Bruce
JNC...........Damn ! Your car is just SO Shiny and Black ! Beautiful !.........Bruce
Those of us who have elected to go without bumpers have fewer options. I carry my front plate in the car, but if I ever receive a ticket, in addition to a fine I’ll need to figure out how to mount a front plate that would pass muster.
Currently I have no way to do so. I do have driving lights mounted low which may give me an option to create a custom plate mount without drilling a new hole or two. I could create a mount off of one driving light for an off-centered plate, but I think that would be odd looking and less sturdy. I could use both driving light holes for a centered plate, but I would then have a lot more bracketry that is visible. The hide-away option might work if I can figure out how to mount the device.
I plan to run without plates and take my chances but I would like to be ready to mount a plate in case I get popped. Does anybody have an example of a front plate on a speedster or coupe without a bumper that can be removed most of the time but can be added or installed with relative ease if and when needed?
Yes I do Jon ! Buy four 3/4" disc magnets. Epoxy two of them inside your frunk to where you want the plate to be. Attach the other two on the plate . They should be exactly adjacent to the other two. There are rubber coated magnets for the ones on your plate that will prevent any scratching. Goggle "strong disc magnets" to find something that will work. I will be using this on my Spyder.........Bruce
Jon........kjmagnetics.com. has a wide selection of items like this. Get on their email. They have an interesting newsletter of all kinds of things to do with magnets. Some are just plain fantastic !...............Bruce
Interesting idea. I’ll look into it. I do have ceramic coating on my car so the surface is a bit slippery.
Suppose I buy what I need to do that, mount the interior magnets, create a plate holder with all the right dimensions to work with my chosen magnet placement, but run without a front plate. If I’m ever questioned by an officer, I suppose I would profess I forgot to remount my plate after the car show that morning, grab my plate and mount in his or her presence. Would a license plate held in place by magnets satisfy an officer (assuming they are in a good mood that day)? Or worse, if I did get a ticket, would such a plate mounting scheme satisfy whatever agency validates the fix for a fix-it ticket?
1. Magnets don't rely on any friction to hold the plate, so no worries there.
2. If said magnets are strong enough they'll hold as well a screws, i.e. you won't be able to just reach down with one hand and knock it off the nose, you'll need two hands and a hefty yank. That should satisfy any cop, just keep the plate in the frunk, and if pulled over say, "I was just just at a car show and forgot to put it back, watch this." You should be fine. I'd also put a little rubber trim around the sharp edge of the plate so I didn't accidentally put a nice scrape in the paint putting the plate on and off.
Here in Oregon I see cars without any plates what-so-ever on them driving around. As Robert says, it's mostly used as an excuse to pull over those deemed deserving of further scrutiny. Anyway, I see it daily, so I'm not too worried about getting puilled over for a missing front plate. I'll use the magnets, or Bruce's device, and do as I outlined above. This assumes I get the car delivered while I'm still allowed by state law to register it.
Jon.....First, I'm not going to use any holder for my plate. I will mount the two magnets directly to the two holes in my Calif. plate ( about 7" apart as I recall) The plate is aluminum and weighs about 3.6 oz. (106 gm) so the magnets should be more than able to keep it in place against inertia and frontal wind.
Like Robert said earlier. Your attitude and demeanor displayed to the officer has a lot to do with how they will react. Being honest and forthright is always best so just tell him your motivations for doing this. I forgot to mount it once and the CHP caught me. He just told me to put it on, I did and that was it.
I really doubt that you will get to the point to have DMV certify your license plate mounting...........Bruce
Jon.......Just looking at the front of your car, perhaps mounting the inside magnets under your driving light and turn signal light would be a better place than in the center. What Michael said about covering the edge of the plate with some sort of rubber "C" channel trim is a great idea ! That would be nice even when it's stored !........Bruce
While friction perhaps plays a larger role in our lives than we consciously acknowledge, Michael you are correct that I have no reason to be concerned about the slipperiness of my painted outer surface. The magnets behind the body will be securely mounted in place, so one might even argue that a slippery outer surface helps the floating magnet find center. (I was apparently thinking of two attracting magnets held apart by a vertical sheet of perfectly flat, incompressible, frictionless material, sufficiently away from any other magnetic material. They would drop like a feather in a vacuum.)
Thanks for the link Bruce. Lots of cool stuff on KJ Magnetics website. My 10 year old inner child had fun browsing.
Maybe I have misread, but Bruce I assume you are not currently using magnets on you Speedster’s front plate (I can guess how you mount your front plate now), it is something you plan to do with your Spyder. Similarly for you Michael, I think this is something you plan to do with your coupe, correct? If you or anyone else has actually done this, and have successfully driven at speed, with a set of magnets that are strong enough to hold everything in place but not too strong to make difficult or damaging the act of installation and removal, than I would like to hear more details. In the meantime I think I will order a few pair of magnets so I can get a feel for how they work when placed on opposite sides of thick fiberglass and go from there.
Below is my entry for the over thinking award. Actually I don’t need an award, my wife has already given me one for this skill. More than once. Feel free to stop reading now.
KJ Magnetics provides some technical information for their magnets. Below is a plot showing the magnet to magnet pull strength of a pair of 1” diameter rubbery coated magnets. As expected, the pull strength decreases with an increase in distance between them.
I measured the thickness of my fiberglass body at the bottom edge near the front nose of the car and found it to be 0.22”. I will assume that is a reasonable approximation of thickness wherever I would place magnets. The magnet is flat, the interior side of the car body is convex, so the gap between magnets will be more than 0.22”. How much more depends on degree of body curvature, magnet diameter, and thickness of the adhesive layer used to secure the inner magnet. I’m guessing somewhere between 1/4” and 3/8”.
According to the above plot, if the magnets were 1/4” apart from each other each, the pull force would be 8, maybe 8.5 lb. At 3/8”, pull force is about 6 lb. Double these numbers for combined pull force when using two pair of magnets. If 3/4” diameter magnets are used, of course these numbers all decrease, by a significant amount as it turns out.
A combined pull force of about 15 lb using two pairs of magnets kind of sounds about right - it seems sufficient to hold a light weight object in place, and isn’t too strong that installation or removal would be a challenge. A few things give me pause though. First, the plotted pull force is pure axial force, it does not consider lateral/shear force. Second, Aerodynamic load on a flat plate at 75 mph, with buffeting, isn’t small. And if only two pairs of magnets are used the plate will be allowed to rock back and forth a bit given the car outer surface is concave and the magnets are flat. If the plate can rock, it might do so with greater enthusiasm at certain wind speeds. At best, enthusiastic rocking would not be good for paint, at worst it would increase the likelihood the plate becomes a ninja weapon at freeway speeds.
I realize I stated I don’t plan to run with a front plate, I’m only looking for something that works sufficiently well that I can quickly use if ever challenged. That means I can probably limit my top get away speed after satisfying whoever pointed out my transgression, so I really should not be worrying about this stuff, but if I’m going to do this, I’d really like an installation that gives me confidence. This leads me to think using four pair of magnets would be a better choice. The closer to the four corners of the plate they can be mounted the better, but with body curvature they may need to be brought towards center a bit, or mounted with small wedges between the magnet and plate. To keep total pull force from being too great, smaller magnets might work, which has the added benefit of minimizing starting gap. Four magnet locations will require a bit more care when installing the magnets to ensure good alignment, and total cost and installation time increase making the clever, simple solution offered by Bruce and Michael more complicated.
Like I said above, I think I will order a few pair of magnets and play with them to gain some gut feel before going further.
Jon....well thought out ! I was thinking about one of your concerns as well. That of having to stabilize the bottom (or top) of the plate if mounted on a curved surface. (perhaps even a compound curve) My remedy was to use a third set of magnets. The two on top and then one on the bottom, on center, spaced out to allow for the curves. This would allow my fingers to get in behind the plate at the bottom and pry out and up to remove the plate. This "rocking action" would make it easier to remove the plate and not bend it either. As you already know, it's easier to disconnect magnets by a rocking action than a straight pull.
By the way, I plan on using a 3/4 " Forstener wood bit to countersink the magnets into the fiberglass slightly and fasten with epoxy.
It'll be interesting to see what you end up with Jon. Keep us posted........Bruce
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10 years
45,000 miles
0 citations
I used to think it was my boyish good looks, clean living, and thinking wholesome thoughts. But then I realized it was that officers of the law are just plain smitten by how clean that rakish front end looks without a tag. How could you expect anyone to mess that up?
If you're looking for something about these cars to fret over, there are much better worries than if you're going to get cited in California for no front plate.
You're much more likely to snap a clutch cable, take a stone through a headlight glass, or, pop-pop-pop, foul an idle jet.
Move along, now. Nothing to see here.
.
Mitch Toll: the voice of reason for America.
I’m the President for Life (Peoples Republic of Stanistan), and I approved this message.
For the record, I totally agree with Mitch. I never installed a plate on my new Spyder, on the road since 2017. I've never run one, and then I got the special/vintage/YOM single plate in 2019.
On my Cayman, I used the Skene design bracket($50) and drilled two tiny holes UNDER the bumper cover where you'll never see. It uses two tiny sheet metal screws and held the plate at 140mph at the Glen.
https://skenebrackets.com/prod...icense-plate-bracket
I did have two stainless steel screws and body color nutserts to mount the plate to my old Spyder if I was ever stopped. Easy, clean, and works. They also were almost unnoticeable. I used 1/4"-20, but I'd wager smaller would work just fine.
On a Spyder, you could simply drill an extra hole in the plate(for bolt spacing) and use two screws from the front grill, Bruce. No installation, complication, or magnets needed.
I kept the plate behind the seat, ready at a moment for "Aww, shucks, officer, I forgot to re-install it after the blah-blah car show last week".
I never needed to install it the entire time I drove the car from 2005 to 2016.
Your interactions with gendarmes may vary, but mine were identical to Mitch.
For those with Speedster or Coupe replicas who are running bumpers- have you thought about mounting the front licence plate below the front bumper? Bend the plate 90° horizontally a little (¼"? ½"?) above the letters/numbers. Bolt the flange you've created to the bottom of the bumper and now you've obeyed the letter of the law while the front end of said Speedster/Coupe isn't spoiled by the plate being the first thing you see. You could even bend the plate back a little below the letters/numbers so it's a little more aerodynamic and even less noticeable.
I think I have a pic of an English Speedster with the plate below the bumper saved in the desk top downstairs (I'm under Covid quarantine AGAIN! and penning this from a lap top in the bedroom) and it doesn't dirty up the front end lines of the car at all. i'll see if I can find it when I rejoin the general population.
Time to get back to the Junior World Championship Gold Medal game- Germany just scored the first goal but Canada has called an offside challenge. The refs are looking at it right now.
update to the hockey game- the Canadian kids won the gold in regulation time 5-2
COVID-Y @ALB wrote:
"You could even bend the plate back a little below the letters/numbers so it's a little more aerodynamic and even less noticeable."
Just don't drill any holes in it...... 
I started with a mildly interesting question I’ve had for a while (does Bruce have an easy fix for bumper challenged speedsters), then went down a magnet rabbit hole. I really have no intention of running a front plate - I just wanted a solution I could deploy quickly if ever challenged. Not a top 10 list item for sure.
I held my loose plate closely in front of the nose of my car and quickly realized how far away the four corners of the plate are from the body of the car in that position. (Bruce - I don’t think there is enough room beneath the horn grill, I think that puts the bottom of the plate too close to the ground). Sure I could bend the plate, but now feeling less confident in a magnet solution, I looked underneath and visualized a simple bracket that could be mounted to the lowest point, where holes would not be noticed when removed. This morning I see Danny’s post and link to the Skene bracket (thanks Danny!). I’m not sure if the Skene with long bottom brackets would work straight out of the box on a speedster body, but something like this would do the trick. Maybe I pursue this so I have something ready, or maybe I just file it away and now know how I would go about fixing a fix-it ticket. Either way I’m good.
Now I just need to figure out how to take glamor shots of my car that are half as fabulous as the photos Mitch creates.
Well there ya go Jon ! Questions asked and problems solved. Me ? I really don't want to have a plate in front of my grill at all. The Spyder will be water cooled and much of the cooling air comes thru that little grill up front. Additionally, I have to say though, a license plate just looks Butt UUgly on any of these cars. (spelled with two "U"s for effect)
However, but not in spite of others, I choose to comply with the Calif. Vehicle Code so I will find a way to satisfy all the requirements. There will be other times and incidents when I feel non-compliance is more important and more consequential and will reserve it for those times.
Jon.....Have fun with those magnets ! They're very powerful ! In one of KJ magnets news letters that showed how a string of them screwed to a board could accelerate a slot car at an unbelievable rate. My Wife loves how I fastened them to the bottom of a shelf and she sticks her metal lid spice bottles to them. I use them for my air hose nozzle hangers too. Five friends who have real 356 Porsche's use my little magnetic brackets to hang their front plates from under their steel bumper. (rubber covered ones) They didn't want to drill holes in the bumper...........Bruce
@Gordon Nichols posted:COVID-Y @ALB wrote:
"You could even bend the plate back a little below the letters/numbers so it's a little more aerodynamic and even less noticeable."
Just don't drill any holes in it......
Come on, Gordon, the possibilities are endless!
I used one of those rare earth magnets in my Vee. I use it to hold the steel latch tab on my crotch belt. It works great, it stays in place when I step on the belt, then I drop down. The magnet holds it in an easy to reach spot.
The latch tab used to slide down under me, making it really difficult to belt in. We use six point harnesses, mine has the two crotch belts linked to one latch.
Bruce, you could probably make a bracket that goes under the turn signal. That way there are no holes and it's off to the side away from your radiator air.
Jon, does your car have bumpers? If so, a couple steel shelf brackets could work with magnets UNDER the bumper. Cheap and easy and effective.
Danny - I have no bumpers, and because I ordered my car that way there are no slots in the body for bumper brackets.
Something like a pair of L shaped brackets mounted to the underside of the front nose (valance?) might work but I would likely need to do some shaping and bending to get a decent fit. It wouldn’t need to be perfect and it would be cheap enough to try. I can paint them black to help hide them. I think I will play around with this, and if a dry fit makes me swoon, then I might actually drill some holes. Thanks.
I appreciate all the advice and discussion on my front license plate question. For the interim, I went with four zip ties and a silicone license plate cover. Requires no holes and cost was under $10. I still think the front license plate is ugly. Maybe if I get a more interesting plate it won't be as bad.
Well that certainly checks the inexpensive box. If you tried to include a photo, I’m not able to see it (and this I gotta see).
