Took the front plate off and had those nasty two holes in the bumper. To make matters worse, they are not nice flat open holes the screws kind of pull the plastic up a bit so "plugging" it with something was a challenge. Since we plug ins all have the silver front bumper detail, this solution seems to look and fit the best! Got these plastic silver plugs from auto zone used for decorating the standard bolts used to mount the cars plates. Shaved down the plastic screws to fit the holes and glued the chrome caps to the screws and pushed them into the holes. Love the look. The bag comes with four screws and 4 caps. They have made it through 2 car washed already. Looks stable!
Looks good. I don't know about glue though.... A little off topic, but why do you have a chrome trim around the black part of the bumper?
It's a plug in. The Prius plug in has a slight different front fascia with that piece going across being silver/chrome and the door handles and a piece across the rear hatch are silver instead of body color.
arek Great solution...creative and looks good. Real world tested too. You can have a lot of fun making up stories of what they do at the next Prius meet! Jim
Haha. CA does require it and I bought from Maryland and I guess they require it too. Because the car was delivered with a front plate ad. But car looks much better without plates and most people with cool cars in Cali we don't put the front plate on. Unfortunately I missed the last one. Will def. be there next time
Great idea! When I bought mine from Maryland they too had those nasty front plate holes.. In Florida we don't need front license plates so I purchased a set of color matched bumper plugs from bumperplugs.com I bet the owner of that site started off like how u did by making his own..
... until you are pulled over for some other reason and get a fix-it ticket. And jurisdictions that have red-light cameras are not amused when they cannot collect that easy revenue when the plate number does not show up, so I imagine that officers in those jurisdictions are pressured to be a bit more aggressive about front plate enforcement.
Yep, CHP will eventually get you. While I was stationed in California for 4 years in the Air Force and lived there another year thereafter I only got one ticket and that ticket was for a front plate violation. It was a fix it but it was still a pain in the butt having to take the time to go and show the cops look I have one here it is installed. I was younger at the time and said the heck with the car looking crappy because of a plate. Now, who really cares I say, it's a car. They require it so just put it and in the end, no one really cares about my Prius having one or not. If you really don't want a plate, I say at least go with something like this then... "Sir, you're getting this ticket for no front plate." *push button* "What do you mean officer, I do have a front plate"
The motorized front plate has an element of humor, but I can imagine that the officer would not be amused, and would then go over the car with a fine toothed comb to find any obscure nit to cite you for, or find something to cite for a moving violation.
Jeez there are a lot of uptight, anal members on these forums! The nature of mods are to skirt if not violate the law! Or you're all law enforcement studs. If you all are worried about the legalities of not having a front plate on and how 'illegal' that is, I wonder how exciting your wives feel about how daring or exciting or edgy you are around the house or in bed! LOL. Oh yeah tinted windows are illegal too, and so are replacing fogs with non approved lights. Have you seen some of the cars in III forum or mods forum or pics forum? They are mostly illegal. Arek
Wow Arek. You must be real cool, to take a chance to get into Hot Water !!! And it will happen. If you're in CA, why did you order the PIP from Maryland? If I lived anywhere near CA, I would have ordered the PIP from Dianne.
actually rear tinted windows are NOT illegal if you have exterior rearview (aka side view) mirrors. so…yeah. not all mods are illegal, and for me personally, all the mods in my thread are not in any way shape or form designed to "skirt", much less "violate", the law. but, to each his own, obviously. a front license plate is fine with me.
