Larry Floersch(Apologies to Banjo Dan Lindner)
A few days ago I noticed the license plates of both my car and truck had not wintered well. The Green Mountains green paint was peeling in large sheets, morphing the color of my plates to that of raw aluminum. I decided it was time to pimp my rides.
Now, I should say here that I am no stranger to doing manly do-it-yourself mechanical-type work. In fact, I may have mentioned my experience in such endeavors goes back to when I was seven or eight and I disassembled the engine of the family lawn mower so I could clean the carbon buildup off the piston to make it run better. And it would have too, if my dad had ever been able to start it again.
So I was undaunted by the prospect of removing 16 little screws to replace four license plates.
I found I could trick out my vehicles with new plates all around — two number plates and two ‘Vermont Strong’ plates — for $100.
My DIY ego soared when the actual work of replacing three of the plates on the car and truck went easily. The screws that held those plates in place went into plastic. Plastic does not rust.
Next, I turned my attention to the rear plate on my car. That plate was held onto its plastic frame by four screws that went into custom square metal nuts embedded in the back of the frame.
As the saying goes, rust never sleeps, and in this case it had gone sleepless for eleven years. That must have made it irritable. The screws would not come out.
I made a trip to the hardware store for penetrating oil. Three days of repeatedly spraying that on the nuts and screws in the plastic frame resulted in . . . a real mess. I’m surprised the car did not slip down the driveway in the oil slick like a bobsled at Lake Placid. Still the screws would not budge.
That got my DIY dander up. Summoning all my mechanical knowledge, I attacked the problem with my power drill, drilling the heads off the screws so I could remove the license plate and gain access to the plastic frame beneath and the rusted nuts and screws.
The frame itself was held in place by screws that went into plastic inserts in the body of the car. One screw backed out easily; the second was more recalcitrant and the plastic insert crumbled, no doubt because of age. But at least I had the frame off the car, and I was able to remove the rusted nuts with their screw stumps from the back of the frame.
This is the point at which I went “DIY simple,” which is a state in which all perspective is lost and the DIYer starts to make really dumb decisions. I decided I could save a little money if I removed the remnants of the rusted screws from the nuts and bought some new screws to replace the ones I had drilled into oblivion.
Back to the hardware store for a screw extractor (also known as an easy out), a drill bit to match, new screws, a plastic insert that I hoped would replace the broken one, and, oh, a can of Rustoleum primer paint because I had scratched the car’s paint down to metal behind the license plate frame in my zeal to remove it.
I literally soaked the rusted nuts overnight in penetrating oil, then drilled into the screws and tried to remove them with the screw extractor. The screws remained frozen in the nuts.
There is a place in every DIYer’s brain wherein lurks a font of colorful language. Once that has been tapped, the pressure is released and the DIYer finally comes to his senses and does what he should have done in the beginning. I called the car dealer’s parts department and ordered a new license plate frame and new plastic inserts to hold it on the car. Because the frame was not steel or aluminum I dodged any tariff price increases. Still, it was $65 (it was, after all, plastic made in Germany). Add to that the expense of an 88-mile round trip to the dealer in Shelburne to pick it up.
When I finally totaled it up, I had spent $125 for parts, tools, and supplies, plus about $75 in mileage for trips to the hardware store and dealer. That was on top of the $100 initial investment, not to mention we could not use the car for five days because it had no plates while we waited for substances to NOT work their magic. (The total does not include the expenses for any extra blood pressure meds or sedatives.)
Speaking of drugs, I would gladly donate money to the medical research community if it would focus less on things like Ozempic and more on something (dare I say a vaccine?) to help us mechanic-
types control the urge to DIY. It would save us a lot of time and money — and possibly from apoplexy.
