Dealer Advertising Front Plate Updated

[69hurstolds]

Welp, the old thread I had of this got cut off since I hadn't posted there in a bit, so here's a new one. In case there was anyone to recall, I had an old front dealer plate that came on my then-new 85 442 and I did not have a duplicate of. And the darn thing has seen better days.

I contracted a place I THOUGHT was going to make me some nice replicas of the plate. Which they did. But while what I ended up with will work, it's of some sort of water dipped decal deal where the brushed aluminum part was even a decal. So I don't know how durable it will be. So if they get dinked/damaged, then they probably will get mucked up quick. I have some GM plate protectors, but they look stupid installed.

Tonight I decided to try my hand at making my own on an actual brushed aluminum plate and using 3M vinyl. Digitized the graphics, and now that I got my templates made, I can cut these puppies out all day long. The ones I had made (turns out they came from India) seem too dark and mottled. I like the brightness of the real brushed aluminum better.

 

[joesregalproject]

That's sweet. I like a good looking dealer plate.

 

[blk7gxn]

You should be making the plates for the place you contacted your order from, beautiful work!

 

[69hurstolds]

Thanks for the props. It was rather tedious.

If you look close, the original plate has the right wing a tad longer than the left wing of the rocket. I originally fixed it, but as I got to thinking about it more, I left it fugged up like the original. The "bracket" around the rocket has some slight deviations from side to side as well. So I went back and fugged those up like the original again. After all, it's supposed to look as close to the original as possible if you're "restoring" one, IMO. The scan of the original plate rocket came out more reddish, but in reality, it's a slightly darker red. The vinyl I used was the closest match that 3M had.

The originals were screen printed, and I'd have to do a 2-color screen printing. I originally thought, cool, that can't be that much, right? But because they would have to make 2 screens for it, it was going to cost a pretty penny here locally. 125 minimum order for 5.17 each due to 2 colors. Not a bad price per....but...that would be almost $650 before tax. And what would I do with the other 123 or 124?? Holy Schnikes! They said the cost wasn't so much in the ink or units, it was into the screen design. Make 1 or 1000 license plates, but the screen only needs to be made once. So if I were doing high volume run, it would be super cheap for each to do on a big order. There's way more to getting good screen printing than I thought. It cost me <$18 retail in materials to do it the way I did it.

 

[ssn696]

Keeping the dream alive!

 

[blk7gxn]

Those differences you mentioned are so minor, and once on your car, no one would ever know until you pointed it out or whipped out the old plate and held it up next to you new one. The plate you made is nicer quality anyway.

If you did go the other route and had 123-124 left over plates, you could hang them on the old Christmas tree next year and have the only Oldsmobile tree around, and the most expensive too 😉 🤣