Tale of Woe: License Plate Covers

[Marc Getty <marc@getty.net>]

Okay, so here is my tale of woe about license plates and license plate covers.

In December 1999 I got a ticket in upstate New York state for having a clear
license plate cover. Turns out the mere existence of a cover, dark or otherwise
is forbidden. So, I paid the fine rather then to go all the way back up to New
York state from Philly to argue the ticket.

So, I was in a particularly law abiding mood one day last month and replaced my
clear license plate cover with a cute little black plastic plate surrounder
thingy. No problems until last week.

Last Wednesday night I put on my new 06-01 sticker on my no longer covered
plate. In you are not from the backward state of Pennsylvania, you would not
know that you get a cute little 1" x 1.5" sticker that acts as proof of
registration that goes on your plate that matches the month of your registration
and the month of your inspection. Within a few hours of installation, by lunch
time on Thursday I have my plate "clipped". Again, if you are not from the
backward state of Pennsylvania, you would not know that these stickers are quite
valuable to the >50% of Philadelphia residents who own cars illegally. All you
have to do is take some tin snips and cut off the corner of my license plate and
my sticker can be your sticker.

Instead of risking a $75.00 fine for having a "clipped" license plate, I paid
$22.50 for a new plate, sticker, and registration card that matches the plate.
Actually this is much much cheaper and faster then it used to be in
Pennsylvania, it used to take 6 to 8 weeks to get all of this processed and
closer to $75.00. So now I have my new plate, and I dare not install it.

Anyone out there know of a solution to my plate problems? I am looking for a
near indestructible license plate surrounder with tamper resistant screws.
Nothing flashy please. I love the pin-in-torx screws that I order at work to
keep people out of our computers, anyone know what thread and the length the
screws are for my Scirocco? I use 1" 8-32s on the 'puters, which is a bit too
small for my Scirocco.

If I can get the thread and the length I'll buy a box of 100 tamper resistant
screws and give them out to anyone on the list who wants any of my remaining 96
screws. Only problem is nobody has the drivers for them :-(

-Marc

'74 VW Thing in near daily driver condition at http://getty.net/thing/
'81 VW Jetta Diesel gone to the scrap heap after 179,786 miles service
'84 VW Jetta GLi was SOLD in Oct 1999 with only 164,275 miles to NJ
'87 VW Scirocco Tornado Red 16V 178,500 miles in Philly PA since 7/2/99
       see it at http://getty.net/scirocco/

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