kimwin
Member
I am thinking about drilling to secure the front license plate on my M3. I do not trust the double side adhesive. I have used quite a bit this exact same adhesive in my home for different purposes. It works well because not exposing to sunlight. The car is very different, soon or later, the adhesive will fail to stick.I've heard a lot of discussion about no-drill license plate mounting, but not a single discussion about where to safely drill if you'd like to permanently affix a front license plate to the Y.
I personally have had the factory adhesive come off, cleaned with IPA, applied a large amount of VBH in warm weather, and still had that fall off. I want to go through automatic car washes without having to remove some aftermarket plate mount and couldn't find anything out there. It's the law where I live and police like to target tesla owners for petty stuff like that. Even bragging about it on social media:
There are no holes in the front plate bracket, so I used new VHB tape to stick the holder on, then drilled two holes through the combined bracket and bumper. I used 1/4" diameter bolts, but whatever hardware you have on hand should work since you're drilling new holes in both pieces.
There's a steel crash bar right behind the bumper where the factory plate mounts, so there's not a ton of risk of damaging anything sensitive. Still I put some tape on the drill bit to make sure it didn't punch through too deep. Here's a picture of a Y with the bumper off to get a sense of what's back there:
View attachment 977442
Out of an abundance of caution I also put blue locktite on the bolts, since the Y bumper plastic felt exceptionally soft.
So far it's been 3 months and many automatic car washes and that license plate hasn't budged.
I'd love to hear about other's experiences and any gotchas. Looking at what's behind the bumper I think you could have even used self-tapping sheet metal bolts, but I wasn't quite brave enough to try that.
Thanks for sharing the picture.