I just wanted to share my recent struggles and solution as far as a front plate here in VA. When I bought my X, it came with the front license plate bracket, un-installed. I wanted to see if I could get by without using a front plate here in VA because I usually drive pretty calmly and lay low when driving it, for the most part. So, over a year went by, and I decided that I would just sell the bracket and did so to a member on here.... mistake. Karma kicked in and I got a ticket for no front plate THE DAY after I had shipped the bracket to its new owner.

The truth is, I wouldn't have ever drilled holes in my front bumper to utilize the stock bracket anyway. I decided to utilize the location where in our bumpers where a tow hook receiver would normally be and SHOULD have been designed from the factory in my opinion!

The products I used were:
Rennline Folding Tow Hook
Rennline universal receiver plate
Some blue vinyl (I think it fits with the car better than silver colored)
Aluminum"L" bracket
Some black edge protector to frame the plate and bracket (so no sharp edges and looks cleaner)
Various nuts, locking bolts, screws, etc

The pictures basically show the process and design. Total cost was around $150. Not a real cheap fix, but I like the versatility of using the tow hook, license plate bracket, or simply covering the whole with the stock cover and it being completely hidden. I may decide to dremel the black cover around the tow hook shaft for when I use the tow hook. But then again, I probably won't be using this for the tow hook often, if at all, so it might not be worth doing.

Sorry the blackberry pics are so bad. Wife took the camera the day I did this! And, the car is filthy here... but shiny now after wash and wax over the weekend!

Thoughts? Any way I could do this better?

 

sweet. something i wanna do to mine!

 

saw this done to a BMW, it was soo clean, someone should mass produce this for the evos!

 

+1 on mass production

Is it easy to remove the license plate so when you bring it to meets and shows you'll just see the tow hook??

 

Yes, very simple. I've just got it attached by one bolt and nut, so as long as you have the correct socket set size it takes just a few seconds!

As far as mass production, I understand the appeal of getting every single nut and bolt needed for the install.... but it really is very simple to piece together a bracket for this using supplies at any Lowes or Home Depot.

I've got leftover bracket material and enough nuts and bolts to make another one of these if anyone really wants it, but like i said, it's all stuff you can find at Lowes or Home Depot!

I strongly recommend the Rennline product line for the receiver plate and tow hook itself. Very high quality stuff... steel

 

sorry i dont have a camera with me, this is how i mounted my plate to the Rennline tow hook- no plate bending necessary as the two L shaped brackets can be angled to match the front bumper

 

Nice! Yeh, I was actually going to add another L shaped bracket to hold the other upper plate corner. But, after I did just the one bracket, I test fitted it to the car and played around with it a bit and out of curiosity tried bending the plate to the same ange as the bumper and LOVED it. The plate looks like its sticking out too far and looks out of place with nothing behind it in my opinion if its straight because its a good 4-5" away from the bumper on that side due to the shape of the bumper.

Also, thanks for the pics of the tow hook install It made me confident enough to tackle it by myself.