Cool Things for the GT-R Owner: License Plate Adapters and Replica Japanese Plate
This is the first entry in a series of
posts where I'll be talking about some items that are useful or
simply just fun to have for a GT-R owner. In this installment, I'll
talk about a couple of items that are cool to have if you own an R32
Skyline or any other JDM car.
License plates probably don't sound
very exciting but they're very important to keep your car legal and
if you have vanity plates they're a great way to add some
individuality by getting a BTMAN plate to tell the
world you're either Bruce Wayne or you have an unhealthy fascination
for people's posteriors. What you may not have considered though on a
JDM car is that Japanese plates are slightly bigger than American
ones and so the mounting holes don't line up properly when you use US
plates on a Japanese-market car.
Japanese plate holes are about an inch
wider than US ones so without modification you'll be forced to put on
your license plate using only one hole and skewed to one side. Not
only is that not very secure but it also just looks weird.
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Here you can see how originally my plate was held on with just one bolt and so was skewed to the right. A GT-R deserves better! |
Fortunately, there's an easy fix by
using these license plate adapters from Canadian company
RightDriveParts. What they are is basically a pair of steel plates
with two screw holes that line up with the wider Japanese ones
together with two more that match with the narrower US openings. They
come with four screws for each plate and you basically use two of
them to attach the adapter to the car's plate mounting and then you
use the other pair to hold the actual license plate to the adapter.
It's a simple but effective solution. The plates cost about 25 bucks
plus shipping which is a bit pricey for just some steel plates and
screws but it beats having to make your own or losing your plate
because it was desperately clinging on with a single screw.
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One of the bars just screws to the old holes and then the inner holes hold your US license plate in place |
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Much better! Now it's centered and my OCD is satisfied. |
Because I live in Arizona, I only
needed one plate and adapter on the back of the car. That also meant
I could add some more individuality to the car by putting a plate of
my choice on the front bumper attachment. Since the car is a true JDM
Skyline I decided to get a replica Japanese plate.
There are several online shops that
offer replica plates but they don't always offer customization of the
characters and a lot of them aren't the size of an actual Japanese
plate, instead they're a US plate size that just has the look of one
originating from the land of the rising sun. The shop I got mine from
– licenseplates.tv – not only offered customization and a plate
the correct size of a real Japanese one but they also offered them in
the different official plate colors and you could pick the characters
that designated which prefecture your car came from. In my case I of
course opted for Kanagawa prefecture, home to Nissan headquarters.
If you're an Initial D fan you can opt for Gunma prefecture. Or maybe you're a rebel and want Toyota's prefecture? Oddly, licenseplates.tv has that wrong and lists it as Sapporo (which isn't even a prefecture) instead of the correct Aichi. Weird. To be honest, I'm not sure they have the prefectural characters right for Kanagawa either. Oh well, I'm no expert and most people aren't so meh. For the characters I decided to go with 235 on the top line (that's
the race number I use for trackdays) and then 23-GT for the main four
symbols. The tradeoff for having the customization options they offer
is a higher price – about 95 dollars (I got mine on sale for less though) versus a third of that
for other places where the plates are not Japan-sized and the
customization is more limited.
Within a week I had my plate and it
looked great – very authentic looking. The paint was well done and
very clean. All I had to do was make the mounting holes since the
plates don't come pre-drilled so that you can customize it to your
needs. That's where I ran into the only problem I had with the plate.
If you order 3 characters for the top line it turns out the last
character will be right where one of the holes has to be drilled. The
hole's not big enough of course to cover up the symbol but it simply
doesn't look clean. If that bothers you then be forewarned and just
order two symbols on the top of the plate.
After getting it on though, the plate
is a great added touch to my JDM car. If you're not required to run a
front plate in your state, it's worth considering getting one of your
own.
Come back for future posts on useful
stuff for your GT-R including a really effective way to make your
25-year old JDM car smell new again and a simple fix for that pesky
kph-only speedo.
Thanks for the info, was wondering what to do with my '90 GT-R coming to PA in terms of the plate.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! It took me a bit of searching to find these plate adapters so I figured I'd share the info with other people.
DeleteYou're right. Looks like the prefecture symbol you got is Tokyo. Not 100% sure though. :)
ReplyDeleteOoops. Yep I'm really not sure after checking it again. It's like it's not Kanagawa but close. ;P
ReplyDeleteGreat blog. All posts have something to learn. Your work is very good and I appreciate you and hopping for some more informative posts. Japanese license plates
ReplyDelete