On my mini I wanted to move the license plate from a front/center location as I didn’t like the way it was right in the middle of my new Rally Lights. I wanted it lower and to the left, and didn’t want to spend too much money as shortly I hope to install some rally lights up front and would probably end up moving it. To this end, I started with a bar of cold-rolled steel from Home depot and bent it into shape as you see below. The steel probably cost about 5 bucks and bent pretty easily with my little plumbing torch and a hammer. The one closest in the photo has an angle to match the oval in the lower grill.
To mount them I purchased some sweet stainless bolts, nuts, washers as well as rubber washers. I didn’t want any rust to form and I generally have a tendency to do things ‘right’ – even if it takes longer and costs more. You’ll soon see how I fell off that straight and narrow path… So my plan was run a bolt through the bracket then go fender washer | rubber washer | grill | rubber washer | fender washer| bolt. The problem I quickly ran into was it is IMPOSSIBLE to reach around behind the lower grill. The intercooler is right up in there. I even had a few failed attempts at installing them with needle nose pliers using a ship-in-the-bottle approach. I read up on removing the lower grill, but that seemed too involved for this project – I’ll save that for the rally light install.
So abandoning that approach, I screwed in the left one as the holes are not cut out way on the left. The right one is mounted a bit more ‘GHETTO’.
Yup, that’s right. Zip ties. How embarrassing. They actually hold pretty well all things said.
At this point I just need to order up a nice black powder-coat license frame to finish it up. Otherwise good to go, until those rally lights go in.
