This is not tremendously exciting as far as installs go, but it’s necessary.

For those unfamiliar with this scenario, one of the things that has to be “altered” with the Japanese imports that come over is the license plate mounting. Japanese license plates’ mounting holes are further apart than those found on our Canadian (and our southern neighbours’ USA) pieces so you can’t fully bolt on a plate without either drilling new mounting holes or fitting an adapter.

Quite often – at least as a temporary measure – you’ll see plates installed like this: they’ll be mounted off-center so that one hole lines up and a ziptie will be holding the other side in place. For the various cars of which there are both LHD and RHD versions running around (RX7s, 350Zs, etc) seeing a plate mounted off-center is a giveaway that it’s an imported version. It works, though it is technically illegal since the plate isn’t properly fastened even though you’re doing what you can. I’ve known people to actually get tickets for this, so why not address the unevenness and take that risk off the table in one fell swoop?

Needing to fix my plate also allowed me to cross off one more item on my to-do list. The original plan, you may remember, was for Doug and I to machine a bracket. Honestly we still might just to give it a shot, since we have other parts we want to fabricate anyway. However, I’d been wanting to show Jesse some support since he’s been killing it with Infamous lately but I wasn’t really in the market for aero. As soon as he announced these were coming however, I knew it’d be the perfect chance to finally order something from him. So I did.

While his brackets do come with a full set of hardware (two bolts for the bracket, two for the plate) I already had something else sitting aside in wait. Earlier this year I’d ordered some 326Power bolts for the plate so I was finally able to unbox and use them as well. I opted for the grey to not stand out too much, and be somewhat in line with the body’s colour.

The install is naturally not much harder than installing a plate by itself, though in my case I did end up drilling a couple of holes in the OEM bracket to allow for the longer 326Power bolts to pass through. I didn’t want to cut the bolts down and by making this room out back, should I ever switch to other plate hardware I won’t have to cut it down either if it’s on the longer side.

With the holes drilled, edges painted, and adapter installed, it was time to toss the plate and its frame back on before getting the bolts nicely lined up and tightened down. Job done.

There’s not much to say about a plate adapter really as it is a fairly simple piece in concept, but Jesse’s offering really is a nice unit. I went for the black version to keep it low-key (not that you really see it anyway) but he did have a couple of other finishes available for those wanting something different. The included hardware is really nice, the bracket itself is extremely tidy with a crisp logo machined in, and there’s the all-important included sticker to add to your toolbox or (in my case) trunk lid. It would seem a lot of the adapters were snapped up pretty quickly, so congrats to Jesse on another successful product as well.

-Bill