Moto tapas

May 01, 2019

You know, tapas. Small plates. Like the one on the back of your bike.

If you are reading this and you don’t have a dirt bike, you’ve probably got a license plate, and some opinion about them. (The number of tail-tidy kits RevZilla sells is positively unholy, so my guess is your opinion is likely to be a negative one.)

This is one of those weird areas of motorcycling where I have an odd fetish — I will spend some coin for neat license plate tchotchkes. Here are some of the little curiosities about tags that I’ve come across over the years and some the oddities I’ve picked up that live on my shelves.

different sizes of motorcycle license plates — It's easy to take things like common dimensions and uniform hole spacing for granted. Photo by Lemmy.

Little plates

Automobile plates were more or less standard in size by 1956. Motorcycles, though, slipped through the cracks in the USA for a long time. The dimensions often differed from state to state, as did the fastening arrangement. (Mounting holes? How big are they? Or are they slots? And what’s the distance between them? Are the mounting holes on the top of the plate, the bottom, or both?)

license plate sizes — These two Ohio plates from Lance's collection show you don't have to switch states or go back very far in time to find changes in dimensions. Then there's his old Puerto Rico plate, which is a very unusual shape. Photo by Lance Oliver.

The variation is enough to make you pull your hair out sometimes, especially when fabricating related items. Now, nearly all states use the fairly common size of seven inches by four inches, with quarter-inch holes 5.75 inches apart, but in the past, those dimensions varied by quite a bit.

plate wrap — You can pretty clearly see that where this modern license plate has been "shrink-wrapped." Photo by Lemmy.

Reflectivity

Gumdrops — Cut glass, smooth glass, reflectorized, owl eyes — I love 'em all. Photo by Lemmy.

In the past, the very oldest plates had no reflective elements at all. Those were generally painted — some by hand, and some by machine. To make plates more visible, some areas issued tags colored with paint containing glass beads. Scotchlite has been used as a reflective substance on license plates in the past.

Modern license plates now often incorporate reflective sheeting to aid visibility. (In fact, the whole plate is often wrapped in that sheeting to achieve graphic permutations that aren't possible or economically viable with paint.)

However, riders brought visibility to their tags in a different way that you're probably familiar with.

Fasteners

One of my personal guilty pleasures are “gum drops” or “owl eyes,” the jeweled reflectors formerly used to bring conspicuity to motorcycles on the road. Staying safe at night is certainly not a new concept.

No item evades evolution. On the far left is a cut-glass license plate jewel. Next to it (green) is a lower-cost version made from plastic, sometimes sold for bicycle use. Moving right still (red), the design gets a little sleeker on the later reflector. Next to that (blue) is probably the very same one your dealer screwed onto your late model motorcycle, and at the very end (yellow), is a current-era reproduction of the glass lenses from way back when. Everything comes full circle. Photo by Lemmy.

They’re fun little pieces that have been around for nearly as long as motorcycles have. Hell, if you have a modern bike, you probably have a set of reflector bolts on your plate that your dealer stuck on there for ya. There’s other cool knickknacks that go along with these, like plate frames, license plate toppers, and plate surrounds, but leave it to motorcyclists to modify even the hardware that holds on your stupid state-mandated tag.

Vert-mount

Vert plate — Look, vertical! Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services image.

Did you know a few states offer vertical license plates for motorcycles? In many states, plates can only be run legally in a horizontal orientation, so this is the legal way to buck that trend. I think it would be kind of funny to pay the money for one of these, and then run it horizontally — that would be a pretty unique traffic ticket.

Material

Early license plates in many places were porcelain baked onto ceramic. They were pretty delicate. Plates have even been made of cardboard and pressed soybeans in the past! That was largely due to material conservation during the war. Nowadays, they’re almost all aluminum to minimize rust, but steel was a popular choice for a long time, as well.

Of course it’s dangerous, it’s a chopper

I have a fairly boring-looking plate frame on one of my motorcycles because it’s actually a recalled item, from what I understand. I bought it from a buddy who wasn't real familiar with the piece's outlaw history.

This brass surround was an interesting aftermarket piece sold through Harley-Davidson through a brand they schemed up years ago called Eagle Iron. Evidently, the item was pulled quickly because of the eagle’s wing tips; they apparently represent a bit of a safety hazard due to their...poke-y-ness?

Post-recall — ...and then look at how the wing tips have changed. Photo shamelessly stolen from a fellow used part mogul.

I’ve seen what I presume are subsequent revisions of this piece, and all either moved the eagle to the bottom of the plate, or furled the wing tips. The recalled version is actually surprisingly hard to find, so I think it’s nifty to have a little oddity on one of my motorcycles.

Front plates

At the time of this writing, some states permit automobiles to run one plate. (This is usually on the rear of a vehicle, though in some places trucks run only a front plate, on the understanding they will typically be towing something that would obscure a rear plate.) However, motorcycles in all 50 states, to my knowledge, are required to show only a rear plate.

Two tags, two reg stickers, one number. And I complain about having having just the one license plate! From Lemmy's collection.

But it hasn’t always been that way. New Jersey used to require front and rear plates for motorcycles for a short time! Here, check out a couple in action from way back when.

YOM plates

Oh, man, here’s one spot where I go buck wild. In addition to the historic or antique plates issued by many jurisdictions, many states permit antique bikes to display year-of-manufacture plates. You find an old plate, pay a chunk of dough, and then you can run your old plate on your old bike. Every state has its rules and regs and loopholes to make things fly, but it’s pretty fun to see what you can find and what might have been on your old motorcycle when it rolled out of the factory.

58/59 plate — YOM plates can vary a bit. That top plate is a 1958, which is a weird year for Pennsylvania. Previously, years were stamped into the plate and new plates were issued annually. The state began to remove the numbers from the plate and instead sent stickers beginning in 1959. See the little slits in the lower left? Those are there for a metal registration tab that never came to fruition. (The plate could technically be run for either a '58 or a '59 in our state, and '60, 61, or '62 could all be on the table if a correct sticker was obtained. Oddly, Pennsylvania issued stamped-year plates one last time in 1963. Weird.) On later plates, since there is no year given to the plate, so to run a "correct" plate, one would need a sticker of the correct year (shown). Photo by Lemmy.

If you’re interested in exploring this at all, you may well become a low-level expert, researching what was used, when it was used, and what’s available and legal to be run now. I have a few bikes that wear YOM plates, and also have some of the plates of their previous owners from other states. They’re neat little reminders that many motorcycles have lived through a few different riders in different places.

License plates are a necessary evil. Why not enjoy ‘em?