California Blue Plates -- Anyone ever re-paint a bad one?

[Guest Anonymous]

I have a blue plate for the 1600 and want to keep it but it looks bad and has surface rust. Anyone know what paint to buy to repaint the thing?

TIA

Chris

[Guest Anonymous]

wrong color?

i know that a lot of hot rod people reuse the plates. sandblast and repaint. I don't know the exact colors, but thew old ones were not reflective so if you can find a match you are in. No one will ever know.

DMV will not give you old plates. I only got one blue plate with my car, so i am waiting for the day i get pulled over and will need to get new white plates

steve k.

[Guest Anonymous]

A friend tried doing that and got pulled over within days. I wouldn't recommend it. Can you get another one from the DMV?

[Guest Anonymous]

i know you can do that in mich and ny. not sure

about ca. i have found them with 1972 stickers

[Guest Anonymous]

if you go to swapmets you'll find people selloing licence plate pairs for about $100 for that purpose

steve k.

[Guest Anonymous]

My understanding is that in order to re-register old plates in CA, you have to take a pic of both of them (I guess there is a difference in the front and back only the DMW can spot) and they have to have been unregistered for 13 years as I recall. But at least you can re use old plates in CA. unlike other states where you have to either have the new regular plates or new colectible car plates. Having the period plates makes a lot of difference to me. New plates on old cars take away some of the character, IMO. Of course, what looks even worse are plate frames that say something like "Joe Schmoe's Auto Sales" etc. Anyway, there are companies that refurbish old plates, I do not have any urls handy but I have seen their web pages before. Keep those plates original!

[Guest Anonymous]

on my dark blue car, so you just go in, hand over yoru plates and pay 12 bucks for nice, new, shiny white plates.

-E

[Guest Anonymous]

I know he didn't get an "official" color or get it color matched in any way. As soon as the cop saw the odd color he pulled him over. Didn't get in trouble, just had to change the plates.

I have blue plates on my '69 Jag. The DMV said I could keep them on the car but had to pay the Vanity Plate fee. I thought that was strange since the plates are standard and not vanity. I haven't put the car on the road yet so I'll still need to decide.

Dan

[Guest Anonymous]

[Guest Anonymous]

I tried to do it, no way. The only cars that DMV will issue period plates for are pre-63. You can not just go down to DMV with your blue or black plates and register your car. They confiscated mine.

All around, California Department of Motor Vehicles sucks- they have way too much power.

HTH

Robert

[Guest Anonymous]

Chris

Go to www.alpca.org (Automobile License Plate Collectors Assn) web page and look around or post a question--in the license plate collector hobby there are a number of folks who repaint license plates professionally so they can't be told from new...

Will be going to an ALPCA swap meet this weekend and will ask around if you wish--drop me an e-mail to remind me.

If you want to try it yourself, you can have a paint store spectrographically match the paint colors for you. I did that to restore a 1956 Florida plate and the match is perfect--I just have a quart of the paint!

Cheers

Mike

[Guest Anonymous]

[Guest Anonymous]

URL: http://www.calpl8s.com/

According to the page linked to here, you are right about the 62 cut off. That was very disapointing to find out. Hopefully the cut off will be moved up eventually. A post on the forum of this page claims that in NC, cars can be registered with old plates, originally from other states!