In Texas, you can use a vintage license plate that matches the year of your classic car or truck as long as you have two plates in good condition with the proper colors. You can register them as either Classic Car which requires you to re-new the plates every year, or as Antique plates which are pro-rated on a five year cycle. Registering them as antique plates only requires one plate on the car (even though you need both of them to be approved at the county tax office) and you do not need a vehicle inspection sticker anymore. As antique plates, you are supposed to only use the car for parades, car shows and club activities, but I have used them on a few of my vehicles for years and the police really have not bothered me when I use the cars for a regular drive around town. I had a couple of pairs of plates that were in nice condition, but they had a few nicks and dings in them. The county tax office said that for the plates to be approved, that I had to touch them up. I decided to totally repaint them and this is the process that worked the best and looks awesome: Here is the plate I started with: Regular paint remover makes quick work of stripping the old paint off: A wire brush gets all the old paint off: Small dings can be worked out with a hammer and dolly. Filler may be needed on bigger dents. I used polyester primer to prime the plates: We now need to paint the plate. The numbers and letters are white so I painted the whole plate white with catalyzed urethane: When the paint is dry, I applied 5 coats of clear over the white: When the clear was dry, I applied two coats of black basecoat over the clear: The next thing to do is to very carefully sand through the black base coat to reveal the white numerals underneath. I use a sanding pad and 1200 grit sandpaper with lots of water: Since we applied 5 coats of clear, there is no chance of sanding through to the white underneath. Start with one numeral at a time until the edges are as nice as you want them: When all the numerals are to your liking, you can apply a couple of coats of clear over the whole thing. The clear will bring out the shine in the black and the white and protect the whole plate: This process will work with any color combination from any state or country.
Nice technique on the letters, definitely different than masking them, and for a little extra labor, looks alot better.
So where do we all send our plates for you to restore? You started out w/ a very nice set of plates! Nice job!!!! That's basically how mine were done- but a little less gloss.
some good restorers will "cut and weld" all your necessary numbers/letters to make a matching plate. but of course, thats money. guess it depends on the history of the vehicle and its original DMV-issued plates. but that is a great tutorial. my next question is the new paint reflective? or was that applied later from DMV?
I took the pictures the day I clear coated them, they are not nearly as shiny now. Yours came out awesome.
Looks far better than my mask-n-paint quickie crap job on my '41 OK tag. Now that I've seen what you did on yours, I'll give that a try!!!
Some states like here in WV only issue one plate per vehicle, so you will never find "matching" plates.
I gotta thank 33Tudor from right here on the Hamb for showing me the clear coating the numerals trick.
ok were not the originals run under/ over a roller with the letter colors .. with all the Craft?stamping stuff a print makers 'brayer' woud be a natural with some practice would give the fresh prison look too . even running it thru a old wringer washing machine...????? run from top to bottom with a roller of 6 inch dia so the paint would cover all the letters in 1 roll thru./ over... before the areas would be repeated lacking paint?? . i feel i would fuckem up sanding ... on the last letter...
You can also use a rag dipped in thinner to remove the field color from the raised letters on the plate. I used the rag method to do the raised PEPSI-COLA letters on this pop cooler.
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