New Number Plates - Sort Of

Hey All,

Thought I'd share my recent "upgrade" to my old worn out number plates. My bike has original but very tattered old plastics. The side panels were painted white at one time and even the yellow number background was painted yellow. I scrubbed these things a lot to remove all that old crud until I could live with just plain old dingy white.

Well I finally got tired of that and added custom cut (by me) number backgrounds and numbers on all three sides. I think it came out pretty nice for a first try. Not at all original, but much better than blank white panels. Can anybody guess why I chose 84?

Too bad the bolt hole on the left side plate interferes with better number placement.

Looks great Tom. My 84 has aftermarket side panels on it. They seem to stick out way too far. Do the stock ones stick out so your "bowlegged" when standing up? Top of my boots catch on mine when I get up on the pegs. The plastic is rough and crummy on mine but they look new. Scott

Very nice backgrounds luvwoods. I've just finished redoing mine DIY also, but yours look better than mine. I didn't have any old ones to trace around so I had to do it by eye and trial and error. Took ages, but looks a lot better than plain white panels IMO.

Original side panels must be getting rare now. Out of interest how do you tell when it's original as opposed to after market items? Do they have part numbers stamped on? I think mine are aftermarket as they're way too shiny.

Cheers
Luc

Luc, all my bikes that have original plastic on them the plastic is smooth and shiny. My sidepanels on the 84 are the same texture as a gallon milk jug here in the states-sorry only example I have! They are also thinner than the factory ones from my 83-500XC. Sounds like you have some nice ones, factory or aftermarket. Scott

Luvwoods,
Nice work. I have always been fond of the overlapping numbers - looks cool!!!
Rick

Thanks for the compliments. I'll try to answer all questions at once here.

I assume my side panels are original because they wear the patina of decades of abuse. There is not one square inch that isn't scratched, gouged, abraded or discolored for one reason or another. At one point in their previous life it looks like they were repainted white which of course turned into flaking dinge by the time I bought the bike just over a year ago. I have not seen any molded-in numbers on them but I've seen enough of the same year real ones vs. aftermarket to lead me to believe they are original. It's difficult for me to say what the original finish was like but when I removed the yellow paint that was the side panel number background, there were a few fairly unblemished spots so based on that I am guessing they were fairly smooth and (once) shiney, if that makes any sense.

Years ago I did mechanical drafting by hand so I laid out paper templates from measurements of the panels first; cut them to fit the panels and then cut the stickers from the paper template outline. The left and right panels are close to being mirror images of each other but there are subtle differences in the angles. Respective radiuses are the same. The front was the hardest to do because of the way it arcs from left to right and bottom to top. In the end I got as close to actual as possible without really knowing where the originals had been.

I still have the templates and will try to see if I can scan them to their original size. If so, I'll post those scanned files if anyone is interested.

And lastly, yes I am forced to stand a little bow-legged due to how far they stick out when mounted, especially at the exhaust pipe. I wear over-the-boot pants so I haven't got my boots caught yet. And since I am somewhat bow-legged myself, its not really an issue for me My first "real" bike was a 1980 twin shock PE175 and that I believe is the cause of my bowed legs. My buddy's KDX175 (remember Uni-Trak?) was half as wide as my PE when standing on the pegs.

1983/84 pre-cut # plate backgrounds are avialable from DC plastic!

Hi, here's some photos of my attempt. I could have bought some backgrounds, but they would have been quite expensive and also I fancied something a bit different. As my bike does a bit of road work as well as trail I wanted some extra visibility, so as I had some spare day glow yellow material I thought I'd give it a go. It's particularly good at dusk.

Boys,
Been wondering how you guys are cutting out the holes in the number plate backgrounds for the mounting holes?

I used a circle template to determine and draw the best size, then decided I'd use the same template as a guide for a really sharp Exacto knife. I would keep going around lightly, scoring it deeper and deeper each pass. I cut from the back side to the front. This resulted in a nice cleanly cut exactly round hole.

Looks nice, what size numbers are you using.

They are 5 inches tall on all three plates.

Thanks, Ive been looking into numbers but couldnt figure out what size.