Front License Plate

I have 3 sports cars and none of them have a front plate and I've never been stopped.  Im in northern TX.  I do keep the plate in my trunk just in case I do get pulled over.

Good to know.  I'm in North Texas as well (Granbury).  Will heed your advice and keep a plate with my registration papers in the car.

I make and sell a front license plate holder specifically for Speedsters. It allows you to remove it instantly and store it in your car somewhere.  You can order one from Vintage Motorcars or from Sierra Madre Collection.  Lots of drivers on this site have them   (but you never see them ......Ha ha ! )       Bruce

I bought one of Bruce's front license plate holders and installed it on my speedster. Here in California the police in some city's are just looking for an excuse to pull you over and write you up. Believe me when I say you're not even safe in a parking lot. The cops have license plate reader that they use and will site you for not having a front plate. I hate the idea of having to drill holes in my bumper, but two holes in the bottom that are almost out of sight, I'm ok with. Keeps me from getting written up and all the stuff that goes along with it, fines etc. The holder is easy to install and works great, no rattles and solid. If you want the plate off, just lift it up and store it. It's that simple. Hope that helps .......

Clever design!  How much are they?

@Helga Speedster posted:

Clever design!  How much are they?

Sierra Madre shows $89.03

I live in Katy, Texas and don't have a front plate on my '66 MGB or my '57 Speedster replica. Notably, if you register your car in Texas as 'historic' you don't have to have a front plate.  Having said that I registered my cars as 'classic', which evidently does require a front plate, but I didn't install one on either car.  I'm hoping the police will see the 'classic' plate as a rear plate only situation, like 'historic'. 

Notably I installed rare earth magnets inside the bumper cover and on the license plate bracket of my 992S, which is too new for "Historic" status.  This magnet arrangement permits me to install and remove the license plate in seconds.  I may rig up the same rare earth magnets on the Speedster at some point.

Jason

The magnets you speak of work really well. I use them on another car. There is one problem I found with them and that is even when I used the rubber coated magnets. I epoxied two bare magnets on the inside of the painted fiberglass and two rubber coated ones on the lic. plate.

After using them for a while I noticed that magnetic grime collected on them.   Even on the rubber coated ones. Over time I noticed that the paint was being scuffed off where the magnets met.  With the plate off I could see two scuffed up spots on the paint..

On my future Spyder, where there isn't any good place to mount a front plate, I will come up with a different magnetic mounting that won't scuff up the paint with continued use.   I normally drive to events with my frt. plate installed but remove it when I park it.  Right now, my idea is to make a set of studs that look like small "spools" that will mount by drilling two 3/16"  holes in the FG and fasten the two chrome plated steel spools from the inside of the body with a couple 10-32 stainless machine screws.  The spools will be milled at an angle on one end to get the other end to be perpendicular to the road. This will allow the lic plate to be mounted in a vertical position.  Then I will use two rubber coated magnets fastened to the lic plate and just "stick " it on when needed.  No more scratched paint spots.  See drawing...........Bruce

ButcherBoy....Nice photos of my Q.C. Lic Plate Bracket. !.........Bruce

@aircooled posted:

The magnets you speak of work really well. I use them on another car. There is one problem I found with them and that is even when I used the rubber coated magnets. I epoxied two bare magnets on the inside of the painted fiberglass and two rubber coated ones on the lic. plate.

After using them for a while I noticed that magnetic grime collected on them.   Even on the rubber coated ones. Over time I noticed that the paint was being scuffed off where the magnets met.  With the plate off I could see two scuffed up spots on the paint..

On my future Spyder, where there isn't any good place to mount a front plate, I will come up with a different magnetic mounting that won't scuff up the paint with continued use.   I normally drive to events with my frt. plate installed but remove it when I park it.  Right now, my idea is to make a set of studs that look like small "spools" that will mount by drilling two 3/16"  holes in the FG and fasten the two chrome plated steel spools from the inside of the body with a couple 10-32 stainless machine screws.  The spools will be milled at an angle on one end to get the other end to be perpendicular to the road. This will allow the lic plate to be mounted in a vertical position.  Then I will use two rubber coated magnets fastened to the lic plate and just "stick " it on when needed.  No more scratched paint spots.  See drawing...........Bruce

Billet aluminum would be nice too Bruce.

My front plate is in my door pocket.  Has never been an issue and nobody seems interested in seeing it.

Ray,  it needs to be steel to be attracted the magnets on the plate.  Perhaps I could insert a magnet disc in the "spool" ?

Mr. Frazoo, that's the best place for your plate I agree.

Here in SoCal we have constabulary with nothing better to do than to walk parking lots and write up people with no front plates.   We had dinner last night with friends who have a Corvette. Recently their local constabulary walked the employee parking lot and wrote tickets for no frt. plates and other items. This was in the Delta Airline employee parking lot. Corvettes are an easy target because of no provisions for a frt. plate.  The main reason they are enforcing this is the Freeway cameras can't send you a ticket as easy when no frt, plate is there.  I guess our Governor is desperate for money to put our poor homeless population in nice Hotels............Bruce

@aircooled posted:

Here in SoCal we have constabulary with nothing better to do than to walk parking lots and write up people with no front plates.   ...  I guess our Governor is desperate for money to put our poor homeless population in nice Hotels............Bruce

Tax the rich, feed the poor
'Til there are no rich no more

Lyrics by Ten Years After

Jason

The way I hear it a lot of the CA rich are now being rich somewhere else.  Like AZ or TX?  Still, there is a lot of CA (outside of LA and environs) that is really very nice -- until it burns to a crisp, or slides in to the ocean.  Great place to visit, could not live there.

35 years without a front plates on two cars in California...no problems at all so far.  I carry them inside the car just in case. 

Small sample, but one set of friends are moving to South Carolina so they can take the profit out of their SoCal home to retire (needed the money)...and we recently met one couple moving to SoCal from New Jersey because they think it is beautiful here and really like the weather. 

To each their own!

@SpyderMike posted:

35 years without a front plates on two cars in California...no problems at all so far.  I carry them inside the car just in case.

"Just in case" of what?

The front plate needs to be attached to the front of the car.

Jason

Just in case I get pulled over...to show I have it.  For my peace of mind more than anything.  If/when it ever happens, we will see.  I haven't and won't be attaching it to the front of the car.  Mea culpa...

I have two cars in another state without front plates too...going on 18 years.

I’ve only had front plates on two of my cars over the last 30 years. Never a ticket in 4 states.

It’s been years since I checked but the law in Utah was “A front plate is required unless there are no factory provisions for one.” When I had both my Porsches painted I made sure there was “no factory provision.” The Spider, well, Spyder.

Bruce has a great solution as mentioned above.  

For those with a Spyder or Speedster without bumpers I've had a few clients who've made vinyl decals (or static cling) of their license plate and stuck that to the front of the car.  That said, I'm sure there is some law against this and it is probably "technically" illegal, but I have not heard of any issues yet...

Thanks Carey !  I have always admired that fold out cup holder you made a few years ago.   By the way, I have been in contact with that guy in Shanghai that you referred me to for a set of custom wheels that have spokes that look like Spider legs. I won't pull the trigger on that one until I know exactly what wheel fits my car.

I also very much appreciate and enjoy your comments on here............Bruce

@aircooled posted:

Thanks Carey !  I have always admired that fold out cup holder you made a few years ago.   By the way, I have been in contact with that guy in Shanghai that you referred me to for a set of custom wheels that have spokes that look like Spider legs. I won't pull the trigger on that one until I know exactly what wheel fits my car.

I also very much appreciate and enjoy your comments on here............Bruce

Thanks.  I stole the geometry for the cup holder from my sister's Saturn Sky of all things, and then changed it a bot to fit the speedster.  Unfortunately making "just a few" made it the worlds most expensive cup holders.

I was working on a set of wheels with the guy also, but the client's wife put a stop to it and wanted "traditional", but I'm sure I'll be circling back to him some day.  Lots of flexibility in design for a reasonable cost it seemed.

Sr. Frazoo...........Socal isn't like it used to be and soon I will be leaving too. When I came out here in 1960 from a small town in Iowa I just fell in love with this place.  It's been downhill ever since. Mind you, there are still many things that are just as attractive and perhaps even better that they were back then. But......there are just too many that have gone away and make it not so attractive any more to me.  As recent as yesterday, I went to Vons grocery to buy some laundry soap. The entire isle of laundry soap and other cleaning supplies is now inside steel cabinets  with locked glass doors. I asked the manager why Laundry Soap ?  He said that people come in and load up a cart and walk right out the front door. They sell it "on-line" at a good discount. They are not allowed to confront them and we have that  "$900.00 theft deductible"

There are Grocery Stores in Russia where the isles are fenced so the shopper points to the item and an attendant/employee  (and your shopping cart) on the other side of the fence puts the item you want in your cart. When you are finished shopping, the attendant pushes your cart up to the cash register and you pay before the bags are released to you. There are no carts for you to haul your groceries to your car. There are no bags supplied either.

It feels like this is where it's headed out here in beautiful SoCal.............Bruce

OUCH!!  I have heard stories of retailers just giving up due to theft.  Closing up shop and leaving the local populace, most of whom I will suppose are not thieves, to fend for themselves.  I am supposing also that if you get all your stuff from Amazon, then you will be paying for it. Unless you swiped the credit card ...  The Russian paradigm seems a bit extreme -- but effective.

As to SoCali, I am only a visitor.  And usually such visits over the years have involved hot smog and huge traffic messes.  That said, one time on business in March I happened to arrive after a pretty good Pacific storm had blow through, and the air was crystal clear.  The mountains had a crest of fresh snow, and one could easily see, for a brief moment, why so many people decided this was a pretty nice place.

I have to say that the air quality has improved significantly since the mid- 60'S.  Then, the air quality was so bad that it was unusual to be able to see the San Gabriel mountains from our home in Arcadia.  Now it is unusual not to see them. That's pretty amazing considering that the population has doubled and so have the cars being driven. Cleaning up industry and car emissions did most of it...........Bruce

My grandfather built a house in San Marino in the very early 1900s.  I recall several visits as a child and always enjoyed (?) the early morning ritual of taking yesterday's newspapers and trash/garbage out to the incinerator in the back yard. Everybody did it.  The natural early morning atmospheric inversion let a low hanging cloud form over the valley that smelled mostly of burning newsprint.  As a kid, I never thought anything was peculiar about that.  Footnote: my brothers and I now own that house and the incinerator has long been gone.   All trash and newspapers now go in to the ground, I guess, vs the air. Actually, I heard that in SoCal they have actually tapped some of the great landfills so as to extract the methane that forms during the anaerobic decomposition of all that organic matter.  And so I guess it is still getting burned, after all.

Wow ! San Marino ! You must have come from a family with some bucks.  I'm next door in Arcadia and compared to San Marino, I live in a slum !  General G. Patton came from there as well.  We often do our exercise walks in Lacy Park which is small but absolutely beautiful............Bruce

Any feedback on a flip up front plate brackette? I know @jncspyder has one on his coupe which looks great... anyone else running this?

long story short: I got pulled over for a "non DMV-issued" rear plate. I knew that was coming sooner or later... but now they won't sign off on the fix-it without a front plate. (I'm in CA) for those on the fence, put the front plate on... don't risk going through this headache.

All I can actually say about my maternal grandparents is that they must have been there early, before it got crazy.  And yes, San Marino  is pretty fancy these days.  I'm not sure they came from any particular wealth.  Immigrated from Great Britain, landed in New York, and headed west.  Some members made it as far as Wyoming, and others all the way to CA.  Grandmother claimed she traveled in a covered wagon -- other relatives did an eye-roll when that story was told, as I recall. Some old photos show the San Marino house in construction and in the background all you can see are orange groves.  Quite different now.

Yup......Arcadia, next to San Marino, was only incorporated in 1950. Yes, this whole area was Orange Groves out thru Cucamonga at one time. Even in the 60"s !  My Aunt back then owned a huge Orange Orchard out in Cucamonga.  Her home was made out of river rocks from the area.  They settled there in 1901 from Pennsylvania and before that from Prague.  My Wife was born in San Gabriel. She had a Sister that died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 on her 18th birthday. She is buried across the sidewalk from General Patton's family plot in San Gabriel. That's how I knew about the Patton family site.

San Marino is now quite a wealthy town.  I'g guess that the average cost of a home over there is $6 million. I believe it surpasses Bel Air in bedroom wealth.  It's really small in terms of area too. Pasadena is on the west side of San Marino. Pasadena (incorporated in 1886) has a "high rent" area too. All around the hills surrounding the Rose Bowl. Another beautiful area as well  with Frank Lloyd Wright and Green & Green homes.  I used to know the owner of the F. L. Wright home on Rosemont. I was able to bring family and friends over for personal tours at one time.  To me, it was an "oppressive" feeling and dark inside but VERY Aztec looking..........Bruce

It has been noted that California has two sets of front-plate rules; one for Teslas and one for everyone else.

If you have a Tesla, LE says you're OK with no front plate, because your bumper has no provision for one.

But, however, if you have something like a Corvette or Porsche with no provision for a front plate, that's just too bad, you'd better drill holes in that bumper if you don't want a ticket.

As to FLW, I'll confess to being a fan.  I think I adopted a few of his more basic ideas in the house I designed and built and now live in.  I have visited many of his homes and the studio in Phoenix, Taliesin.  His genius is unmistakable, if even a little off-putting in some sense.  He was a shrimp, and figured that every one else was to, so his interiors tended to fit his physique vs those of Normal people.   He was an innovator, and in many cases not that much of an engineer.  many of his structures, both residential and commercial, have not stood the test of time all that well. With major rebuilds needed (including Falling Water) to keep them from collapse or destruction from the elements.   So narrow hall ways, low ceilings, and lots of interior wood that tends to be or age  to dark.  and he designed the furniture too.  Often glorious to see and abysmal to actually sit in.  He told his clients what they wanted (that is, what he wanted) vs the other way around, and was known to come in to an occupied home and rearrange things the way he thought they should be.   all that said, I think his basic architecture -- use of space, materials, accents, and details are magnificent.  His work with glass rivals that of Tiffany, IMHO.

Sr.Frazoo.......Couldn't agree with you more about Fl Wright.  Especially the dark closed-in look and feel.  His  use of glass redeems some of that but in the Rosemont house it isn't enough.  Same thing there regarding construction and engineering. Lots of water intrusion.  Sometimes aesthetics and engineering are not compatible.

Green & Green homes built around and in Pasadena are a different story. They used lots of heavy wood. Timber really, just squared off.  Same approach though. They built complete homes including the furniture and a lot of the details were repeated all through the home. Square wooden pegs for instance. The one that comes to mind is the Gambol house in Pasadena. I visited that one a couple months ago and I'm still impressed with Green & Green's attention to detail in its construction...........Bruce

@Vince posted:

It has been noted that California has two sets of front-plate rules; one for Teslas and one for everyone else.

If you have a Tesla, LE says you're OK with no front plate, because your bumper has no provision for one.

But, however, if you have something like a Corvette or Porsche with no provision for a front plate, that's just too bad, you'd better drill holes in that bumper if you don't want a ticket.

Hi Vince, I saw this today on a new Tesla. Maybe things will change...........