VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND NEWER 1946-1948 License Plate Bracket

I bought an original Front License Plate Bracket off Ebay for my car ( '47 ), it attaches to the bumper, in the center, with two bolts...But, it would seem I'm missing something. If I bolt it up directly to the bumper without some sort of "spacer", there will be no room for the lower license plate nuts and the license plate itself will be cocked at an angle leaning forward...

Anyone out there still have the original front license plate bracket on their '46-'48 bumper that can tell me what I'm doing wrong or what I'm missing...? Thanks

Maybe it's not the correct bracket or it's bent?

seems like mine was kinda bent too,not sure if it was the right one either,but I had to modify mine lower,because I needed the room for the crank to slide through.

pdxjoe... Mine works well on my '48. Maybe it's not the correct
one for the '46 to '48s. I don't have any trouble with the
lower bolts.....Joe

Well, this is strange...I got it from a guy that advertised it as left-over parts off his '48...Everything I got is '46-'48 stuff and the bracket is identical to fillingstations '46-'48 bracket...Doesn't appear to be any room to bend it...I tried the other way...it's worse...lol rats

Dale, your appear to have your plate in the center...Do you also have a bumper bolt in the center...?

I had the same problem with the plate holder on my 48 Aero, and I have no reason to believe the holder is not the original.

I had to bolt the plate to the holder then bolt the plate and holder together to the bumper. After getting my bumper rechromed, for many dollars, I added nylon spacers between the holder and bumper to keep the holder away from the bumper.

Here's a picture before the spacers....hard to tell, but the holder is very close to the bumper.


Here are a couple of pics after the spacers were installed...



Might not be "correct", but it works for me.

Yes, I also have the bumper bolt in the middle behind the plate.

Dear Ken, my license plate bracket is basically the same as yours but it's not exactly the same...Have you seen filling stations bracket...? I find yours to look more like the C of the 40's less expensive version...

Kevin.........

I just looked at the brackets that FS and Cot40s offer in the online catalogs. They look very similar to each other and appear to be a little different than mine. Well, that will confuse and amuse us won't it? Mine was on the car when I bought it in '03 and looked beat up enough for me to call it "original".......maybe it's just a universal bracket someone put on sometime in my car's life. Is it possible that license plate brackets were dealer installed and multiple suppliers were used? Whoa, that sounds like a Gene question. In any case, I had to do a lot of bending and tweaking to get it even close to where it is today......and had to add the spacers to get it away from the new chrome on the bumper. My aero is a driver in the 20 footer class and I don't ever expect to have it judged.........soooooooooo it works for me.

Its not a 1946-1948 bracket. All the pictures of new cars of that age show the mounting surface for the plate perfectly verticle.

Thanks Gene. Do you know if the reproductions offered by Filling Station or Chevs of the 40s are accurate?

I just posted under members photos what my front license plate bracket looks like for the '48. Does yours look like this? It mounts so that the bracket that the plate bolts to is up towards the middle of the bumper.

Thanks, Dale, for those photos. Your bracket looks like the ones offered by FS and Cot40s. Mine must have been a cheapie replacement sometime during the life of my car. The major difference I see between mine and yours is that (let's see if I can describe this without going out to the garage to take another picture ) on the part with the two holes that attach to the bumper, mine is absolutely flat. It doesn't have that indentation between the two holes that I see on yours.
Mine was all bent up when I got the car, so maybe I just didn't get all the bends back where they belonged. My first picture above looks very close in position to where yours sits, but the nuts on the back holding the plate on were touching the bumper. That's why I used spacers. Maybe a little more bending tomorrow..........

Thanks again Dale.