License Plates

Washington state (and most others) require that the front license plate be displayed on the front of the car.  A lot of Ferrari owners here ignore that, but some get tickets.  I ordered the proper front license plate bracket figuring that it would be obvious how it was to be installed.  Not so.  There's no obvious holes, bolts, etc. as to where it would go.  Perhaps that's because a Euro spoiler is on my car.

In any case, I took a look and figured out that I could bend the bracket ears some so that I could pop rivet it to the grill.  I had to remove the grill to do this, but it all was easy after that.

As you can see, I have it mounted under the right turn signal.  This doesn't block any of the radiator air.  If I (or the next owner) wants to remove it, there will only be two small holes left in the grill that are hard to see.

I do need to work on the rear plate too.  The two of the self-cinching nuts are loose while the other two are missing.  I've ordered some replacement ones, but that task is for a different day!

The day finally arrived.  I have had the 308 on the lift since the A/C guy has been promising to come out to recharge it for the last week.  Oh well, at least it's convenient to do a few things.  The 308 is so low, having it in the air to work on the interior or trunk really saves my back.

It took a while to figure out how to remove the carpet covered fiberglass panel that covers the back of the license plate area.  After pulling off some glued carpet, I found three screws that holds the panels in behind each set of rear lights.

Then you have to remove the carpet from the trunk floor and the two snaps that it fastens to.  Then a sandwich board piece lifts out.  Finally the fiberglass panel can be pulled free.

The first thing I did was to figure out why I wasn't able to use the self-cinching nuts that were still there.  I had tried 6mmX1.0 thread screws and they wouldn't thread in right.  Now that I had access to the rear, I tried a 1/4" x 20 thread bolt and it worked.  I had to run a tap through each nut to clean up the threads from my 6mm try.  When I used the right bolts, the nuts were tight enough that I didn't have to do anything with them.

I had bought both 6mm and 1/4" self-cinching nuts.  I measured the existing holes at 10mm or .394".  The 1/4" self-cinching nuts are designed to use a .344" hole.  These work by having a serrated edge that bites into the edge of the hole and an extension that flattens on the other side when the nut is installed using a press.  Since the holes in the body were too large, I ended up using a sheet metal strip to install the nuts on.  Then I used epoxy to bond that strip to the inside of the trunk so it wouldn't fall down if both bolts were removed.  Here you can see the strip with the self-clinching nuts installed.  The original two nuts are at the bottom.

I also put some grommets between the license plate and the car body so the plate wouldn't be directly on the paint.  It's a little too late as there are several marks already but at least they will be there if I ever repaint the car.  Now I just need to find the proper original license plate holder.

The 308 just turned 30 a milestone.  The main advantage is that it can now have collector vehicle or restored plates in Washington state.  That means a one-time fee (which is about the same as one year's registration) and one never has to pay an annual fee after that.  Further, only a rear plate is required.  So the front plate came off and a 1978 restored plate when on the rear.  Putting on the rear plate was easy now that all of the nuts are firmly fixed.  To remove the front plate meant removing the grill again and drilling out the pop rivets.  That just left 2 small holes in the grill that are unlikely to be noticed by anyone.

I have gotten a original rear plate holder, but two of the studs are broken off.  The whole thing is thin aluminum, so welding on new studs is not an option.  So I'll need to think of another way to fix the studs.