writ­ten 2/17/25, updat­ed 8/24/25

Overview

Materials & Cost

Process: Drill

• Find fac­to­ry dim­ples on the bumper

• Using a ¹⁄₄″ drill bit, drill holes

• The 3rd/bottom hole does not have a fac­to­ry guide dim­ple

Align and hold the frame to the car in line with the 2 dim­ples to use it as a tem­plate for bot­tom hole dur­ing instal­la­tion

• Find the plas­tic Pop Riv­ets that came with the frame. Push them through the frame and into the bumper

• Slide the Riv­et Gun over the part stick­ing out, and squeeze. This will com­press the anchor back against the bumper. Release and squeeze again. You should hear a loud CLICK and the rod should come off (*See Notes for a look into how it works)

NOTE: You might have to squeeze a few times, mak­ing sure the gun is seat­ed all the way against the frame. If it fails (the rod breaks off, but the riv­et does not hold) push it out and try with the oth­er riv­et. In case this hap­pens, and you don’t have a spare, make sure to do the top 2 holes first because the frame will hold fine with just two attach­ments. See Notes sec­tion for more infor­ma­tion on the hard­ware

• Slide the plate into the brack­et, secure with screws

DONE!

Process: No-Drill

WARNING: My first attempt at this failed after a month. At the time, it was installed in the cold win­ter weath­er, and I did not employ the use of an adhe­sion promoter/sandpaper. This is writ­ten with the revi­sions in place. *See NOTES sec­tion for my updates regard­ing success/failure

• Make sure your license plate frame has enough sur­face con­tact areas to adhere it well to the car with 3M tape

This is the vehi­cle’s orig­i­nal plate frame

• Go out to your car and dry-fit the frame accord­ing to the fac­to­ry dim­pling on the bumper

• Using painter’s tape, mark out bor­ders to help with align­ing (Rec­om­mend using strips that attach to both the frame and the car for eas­i­est align­ing)

• Install license plate to frame (Can do this as the last step, if you pre­fer)

The OEM hard­ware will not scratch the car, stop­ping short of the end of the holes

• With 180–320 grit Sand­pa­per, use cir­cu­lar motions to rough up the sur­faces where the tape will attach

• Soak either a cot­ton pad or cot­ton ball with Rub­bing Alco­hol (high­er per­cent will dry faster) or use alco­hol wipes

• Wipe down sur­faces with the alco­hol and wait for them to dry all the way
• Open the Adhe­sion Pro­mot­er pack­et (I’d rec­om­mend gloves here) and wipe each con­tact point with a thin lay­er

• Allow to dry (90–120 sec­onds)

• Mea­sure out and cut the VHB 3M Tape to the size you need for your plate

• Apply the sticky side to the plate, leav­ing the oth­er side of the tape (the one that will con­tact the car) still cov­ered

NOTE: 3M’s instruc­tion for this tape rec­om­mends heat­ing up with a hair dry­er if using in the win­ter. This tape is also move­able until com­pressed and mov­ing it should not affect adhe­sion prop­er­ties. Vis­cos­i­ty reach­es max­i­mum increase by 72 hours.

Rec­om­mend­ed: par­tial­ly remove the lin­ers in the house before going out­side. It can adhere tight­ly, so you may need to use tweez­ers if your nails aren’t able to get a good hold

• Go out to your car
• Dry fit the frame again, if you’d like
• Use Rub­bing Alco­hol to wipe clean the install area of the car, mak­ing sure all for­eign debris is removed (oth­er­wise the tape will adhere to the debris instead of the car)

• Wait until it it has evap­o­rat­ed
• Peel off the lin­ers from the mount­ing tape

• Align with the painter’s tape
• Press
• Keep press­ing with decent pres­sure for at least a minute (I did around 2–3 min­utes. It was eas­i­est with my feet while I messed around on a phone for a bit)

• Remove the painter’s tape

Done!

Notes

• Update 2/27/25 (10 days lat­er): Still hold­ing strong and no prob­lems! Been on the high­way, through work zones, lots of pot­holes, speed bumps, took turns too quick­ly, and plen­ty of stop and go traf­fic. So far, so good.

• Update 3/25/25 (1 month): FAILURE!! Went to walk the dog and found the license plate frame on the ground! Good thing it was at home. I’ve decid­ed to leave the instruc­tions and post, up, though, because I still think it’s doable with some revi­sions.
• It’s impor­tant to note that all the 3M tape was still adhered well to the car. In fact, they were dif­fi­cult to remove. Removal left a clean, unmarred sur­face — exact­ly the point of adher­ing as opposed to pok­ing holes. This means that the fail­ure point was on the side of the brack­et, and not the tape or the car por­tion. I won­der if it was because the weath­er start­ed to change. I installed it in the cold win­ter, and it fell off when the days warmed up and overnight.

• Update 3/30/25: Com­pro­mise. While I did not want to risk the plate falling off again (what if it hap­pens while on the road?) I still think that it’s pos­si­ble to adhere with 3M tape with­out drilling. So, what I did this time was use the drill method for the top two holes and applied the revi­sion process (adhe­sion pro­mot­er and sand­pa­per) for the low­er hole. That way, I have it secure AND I did­n’t drill into non-dim­pled bumper. I will mon­i­tor and con­tin­ue observ­ing the bond of the low­er por­tion of the frame at reg­u­lar inter­vals to see if it holds up

• Update 8/24/25: With the phys­i­cal attach­ments, my brack­et has not fall­en off, of course. I went to try and tug on the bot­tom part of the frame where there is just the adhe­sion, and while it did­n’t move much, I can’t real­ly get a good read because of the hard­ware on the upper por­tion. At this point, I’m going to say that I do NOT rec­om­mend the No-Drill method, but you are wel­come to try! If you do, com­ment and let me know if it works for you!

• If you look at the word­ing on the back of the plate frame, you see the let­ters “PP+EPDM.” These stand for PolyPropy­lene (PP), plas­tic, and eth­yl­ene-propy­lene-diene monomers (EPDM), a syn­thet­ic rub­ber. 

Hard­ware Infor­ma­tion

Plas­tic Pop Riv­et — How it Works

Top View

Bot­tom View

For fun, I tried it with dou­ble thick­ness to see what would hap­pen. The first attempt failed, high­light­ing that if the ridged por­tion does not grab, then it will not stay in place and become loose. The sec­ond attempt suc­ceed­ed but was extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to squeeze.

Here’s the failed riv­et