Tag: Hardware

Front License Plate Frame Installation Mustang Mach‑E: Drill & No-Drill

writ­ten 2/17/25, updat­ed 8/24/25

Overview

What

Installing a front license plate frame by both drill and no-drill meth­ods for 2024 Ford Mus­tang Mach‑E GT Ral­ly

Why

To com­ply with state reg­u­la­tions for dis­play of front tags

Time and Effort

Time: 5–20 min­utes

Effort: Easy

Materials & Cost

Supplies

No-Drill

  • 3M Dou­ble Sided Water­proof VHB Mount­ing Foam Tape, 1.18in x 16.5 ft
  • Scis­sors
  • 91% Iso­propyl Alco­hol Wipe
  • Adhe­sion Pro­mot­er
  • 180–320 grit Sand­pa­per
  • Painter’s Tape
  • License Plate Frame (OEM)
  • Plate Frame Hard­ware (OEM)

Drill

  • Plas­tic (Poly) Riv­et Gun
  • 1⁄4″ Drill Bit and Dri­ver
  • License Plate Frame (OEM)
  • Plate Frame Hard­ware (OEM)

Cost

  • $16.99 for 3M tape roll (Ama­zon)
  • $13.95 for 3‑pack Adhe­sion Pro­mot­er pack­ets (Ama­zon — $4.65 per pack­et)
  • $17.99 for Plas­tic Riv­et Gun set (Ama­zon or cheap­er from Har­bor Freight)
  • Free all oth­ers (owned, came with car)

Process: Drill

Pros: Secure, wor­ry-free, fast

Cons: Cre­ate holes in bumper (could affect col­lec­tor’s val­ue), can’t remove eas­i­ly

  • 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

Pros: Remov­able, no holes drilled into bumper, no mar after removal

Cons: Not 100% secure, chance of los­ing plate and frame

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
I tugged and wig­gled it. Firm and strong hold!

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

Con­tain­er License Plate Hard­ware

BB53-17A386-AA

Ford

1⁄4″ thick­ness in hole

1⁄4″ thick­ness screws

Plas­tic Pop Riv­et — How it Works

Start

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.

You can see how there’s more of the ridged part on the sin­gle thick­ness before it cut off

Here’s the failed riv­et

DIY: PVC and Hardware Cloth Garden Plant Enclosure + Winter Cover

writ­ten 8/5/2024, updat­ed 9/6/2025

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Overview

What

Tem­po­rary/dis­as­sem­bly-pos­si­ble enclo­sure for patio and deck plants using PVC pipe and hard­ware cloth, fea­tur­ing doors

Why

Thiev­ing squir­rels, birds, and deer yet still allow­ing pol­li­na­tors, air, sun, and rain through

Time and Effort

Time: Sev­er­al hours to 1 day (maybe more)

Dif­fi­cul­ty: Mod­er­ate (depends on your equip­ment and mate­r­i­al sit­u­a­tion)

This is what start­ed it all. My beau­ti­ful can­taloupe brazen­ly stolen and eat­en right in front of my eyes by a crafty yet cute squir­rel

Materials and Cost

All mate­ri­als bought from Ama­zon and Home Depot

Mate­r­i­al

1″ 4ft PVC Pipe

1″ 6ft PVC Pipe

16-gauge 2′ x 50′ Hard­ware Cloth Roll

200′ 16-gauge Gal­va­nized Steel Wire

1″ PVC Hinges

1″ 90 Degree Elbow Fit­ting

1″ 3‑Way Fit­ting

1″ Tee Fit­ting

Cab­i­net Hard­ware Pulls

Quan­ti­ty

12 pipes

5 pipes

31ft

0.5 Roll

4 Hinges

8 Fit­tings

8 Fit­tings

2 Fit­tings

2 Pulls

TOTAL

Use Price

$80.40

$43.99

$24.80

$3.97

$36.68

$11.84

$26.00

$3.94

$4.38

$236.00

Owned Sup­plies:

Nee­dle Nose Pli­ers

Lines­man­’s Pli­ers

Diag­o­nal Cut­ting Pli­ers

Ratch­et­ing PVC Cut­ter

Sharpie

Mea­sur­ing Tape

Dig­i­tal Calipers

Rub­ber Mal­let

Bits/Driver

Screw Gauge

Planning and Schematics

Note: Draw­ings not to scale

Dimen­sions (L x W x H)

Out­er Dimen­sions: 45″ x 22″ x 53″

Door Dimen­sions: 20.5″ x 49″

Fit­ting Dimen­sions

3‑Way (For­mu­fit brand — 8 qty)

1¼ ” + 1⅜” = 2⅝” length

1.25in + 1.375in = 2.625in

90 Degree (Char­lotte Pipe brand — 8 qty)

1½” + 1⅛” = 2⅝”

1.5in + 1.125in = 2.625in

Tee (Char­lotte Pipe brand — 2 qty)

⅞” + 1⅜” + ⅞” = 3⅛”

0.875in + 1.375in + 0.875in = 3.125in

Pipe Lengths

Remem­ber that the ends of the pipes will fit into the fit­tings. All mea­sure­ments are approx­i­mate. Actu­al item dimen­sions may vary

Out­er Frame

42″ pipe (4 qty) — Length

19″ pipe (4 qty) — Width

50″ pipe (5 qty) — Height

Doors

17.5“pipe (4 qty) — Width

46.5″ pipe (4 qty) — Height

Over­all Weight

1 in, 4 ft PVC pipe = 1.4lbs

Over­all Weight of Enclo­sure: ~37lbs

Author’s Note

From start to fin­ish, con­cep­tion to assem­bly, this took a total of 3 days of time. Not count­ing wait­ing for parts, choos­ing parts, etc. The idea start­ed way back in 2022 when I was hav­ing issues with squir­rels steal­ing my toma­toes. I dreamed up and drew up plans, even going as far as to buy­ing much of the mate­ri­als to do it (orig­i­nal­ly out of wood and com­pos­ite wood). How­ev­er, the squir­rels quit steal­ing my stuff until this year when my veg­eta­bles and fruit dis­ap­peared one by one. The final straw was the baby can­taloupe! WARTIME. Since it would be placed on the deck instead of the ground like the orig­i­nal plans intend­ed, I need­ed a less weighty option and there­fore chose PVC pipe. Armed with the orig­i­nal plans, I altered them. You can plan all you’d like, but doing is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent! So start­ed the 3 day-total-time jour­ney (real­ly, it took about a week wait­ing for all the pieces). Many, many cal­cu­la­tions, mis­cal­cu­la­tions, frus­tra­tions, and even blood shed­ding lat­er, I’ve — at this writ­ing — most­ly com­plet­ed the project. Just a few minor tweaks and a test run before final­iz­ing the hard­ware.

Over­ar­ch­ing Ques­tion: Does it actu­al­ly work???

As of August 2025: YES, IT WORKS suc­cess­ful­ly against thiev­ing squir­rels! They tried, hard with no suc­cess! (see Notes sec­tion for more)

Process

Gathering Supplies and Equipment

Need­ed: Han­dles, PVC pipe, Ratch­et­ing pipe cut­ter, PVC fit­tings, hinges

Calculating, Measuring, Cutting, Assembling the Frame

Eas­i­ly the most time-con­sum­ing part. Using the spe­cial­ized PVC cut­ter and also a dig­i­tal caliper saved a lot of time. Just set­ting up the frame is easy. The hard part is fit­ting the doors prop­er­ly with­out cre­at­ing too much of a gap (try­ing to pre­vent crit­ter entry after all) around the door and frame while remem­ber­ing that the fit­tings add more length to each side (cal­cu­la­tions are done for you already in the schemat­ics above). On top of that, there’s the con­sid­er­a­tion of hard­ware cloth size to make as the hard­ware cloth is best wrap­ping around the pipe. If this was wood, it would be eas­i­er to just cre­ate a remov­able frame around the out­side of the cloth. Lots of re-mea­sur­ing and re-cut­ting until I got it right (or close enough).

Use a rub­ber mal­let to make sure the pieces are snug in the fit­tings

Hinges and Handles

This was more com­pli­cat­ed than it need­ed to be. Hard­ware includ­ed with the (unthread­ed) cheapo Han­dles are just too short to span the 1 in width of the PVC pipe. With­out buy­ing more or hav­ing to run out to a store, I delved into my giant box of ran­dom screws. Thank­ful­ly, I man­aged to find 4 that were both long enough and the right size (screw and thread gauges are use­ful). The Hinges snapped eas­i­ly onto the PVC and most­ly stay in place. And no won­der they stay in, because it gouges the plas­tic like no oth­er if you remove and slide them around, so make sure you’ve mea­sured where you want them first.

WARNING: Fas­ten any hinges before fas­ten­ing han­dles so that the han­dles are ori­ent­ed prop­er­ly, or at least mark loca­tions well. Because I wait­ed a year, my han­dles are now in a wonky ori­en­ta­tion

May 2025 — Hinge Per­ma­nence

Final­ly decid­ed to screw in the hinges. I was way too lazy to take the entire cab­i­net apart for the win­ter, but it end­ed up endur­ing the win­ter just fine

Used an 11⁄64″ bit, lined up the hinges on the pipe, and went for it. End­ed up using ran­dom screws that I hap­pened to have, so they’re all mis­matched and end­ed up rust­ing over the sum­mer

Attaching the Hardware Cloth

This is 16-gauge hard­ware cloth which is hard to find in stores (at least where I am). It’s big enough to allow pol­li­na­tors, water, and air into the enclo­sure, but small enough to thwart rodent and avian rob­bers. This was the lim­it­ing fac­tor for size of the enclo­sure as the cloth I used was only 2ft wide (they sell them larg­er). And no, chick­en wire is not rec­om­mend­ed. Not only are the holes too large, but the wire is weak. Also, to note, because this enclo­sure sits on the deck, there is no need for bot­tom cov­er­age. If I were to use the wood­en schemat­ics made to sit on the ground, then it would be ful­ly enclosed by wood, or extra cloth would need to be sunk into the ground (1–2 ft deep) to deter dig­gers.

The exceed­ing­ly time-con­sum­ing and phys­i­cal­ly painful part of this was the issue of how to attach hard­ware cloth to PVC. With­out spend­ing a for­tune, I decid­ed on a roll of gen­er­al-pur­pose gal­va­nized steel wire and some pli­ers. How­ev­er, giv­en how long it took to secure every­thing (5 hours! In the bak­ing sun and even through a short down­pour), I’ve been think­ing of a bet­ter attach­ment method (See NOTES sec­tion)

Twisty-ties from let­tuce are nice and long
Nav­i­gat­ing cor­ners
Cut to bend
Over­lap­ping pieces
Tem­po­rary twisty ties to hold two ver­ti­cal pieces of hard­ware cloth togeth­er
Bend­ing these under
3rd lay­er of over­lap (top, back, and side)
Twisting the Galvanized Steel Wire with Pliers

After much tri­al and error, I found that this was the fastest way (at least by hand) to tie off the 16-gauge steel wire (per­haps I should have used some­thing small­er)

Cut
Thread and ori­ent
Grab with line­man’s pli­ers
Twist
Keep twist­ing (be care­ful, though, twist­ing in the same spot too fast and hard will snap it)
Tight

Fun fact: If you feel the met­al after twist­ing, it’ll feel real­ly hot

Grab some nee­dle nose pli­ers and bend it away from pok­ing peo­ple
Safer!

Keep Going Until Completion

What’s annoy­ing is that tying off the hard­ware cloth with wire will cause ran­dom pock­ets where it bows out. Just keep on until every­thing is secure. Be aware that the ends of the hard­ware cloth and the steel wire are very sharp!

While the cam­era did­n’t focus on it, cut out pieces to make room for the han­dles
Trim­ming excess of doors
Trim­ming ends to pre­vent scratch­ing of feet or deck
Where doors meet. While does­n’t look ide­al, it works because touch­ing wire acts like a latch to hold them togeth­er
Hinges can still be manip­u­lat­ed since they’re not yet screwed in
Note the spac­ing between the hinge hard­ware. You can open or close the space just by twist­ing the hinge (hence why it has­n’t been secured until the end)

Complete!

Most­ly. No lock­ing hard­ware yet. Com­ing back to this 2 years after the fact, I’m still hold­ing strong with just a ball bungee through the 2 han­dles.

Wel­come home, can­taloupe plant!
3 total bungee cords to hold in place while in test­ing phase. Works real­ly well
Giv­en the space at the bot­tom where some­thing can push its way in, all I did was place a spare paver brick and voila!

Winter Cover

The aim was to have it decon­structable, but I was too lazy, so I decid­ed to use it as sort of a win­ter­ized green­hou­se­ish thing. My region is Zone 7B USDA har­di­ness. Two options (so far) for win­ter­i­za­tion.

Plastic Sheeting

Suit­able for mild win­ters with low dura­tion freez­ing peri­ods, about 20–40F.

Mate­r­i­al

6 mil Green­house Plas­tic Sheet­ing 12′ x 25′ (much too large)

Zip Ties

Pack­ing Tape (for cor­ners)

Pic­tures!

Plas­tic Sheet­ing. I bought entire­ly too much. Prob­a­bly need­ed half of that.
6 mil thick­ness
Zip tie secur­ing and tape for the cor­ners
Cut it off for neat appear­ance
Left open­ings around seams for ven­ti­la­tion and access
Poked a few drainage/vent holes in the top with a screw­driv­er

Plastic Sheeting Winterizing Results

2 months: hard freeze ear­ly Decem­ber for 1–2 weeks, and it’s dipped as low as the teens. So far so good. The plants seem to be doing just fine in there. I have hard neck gar­lic, straw­ber­ry, my blue­ber­ry plant, and onions.

Post-Win­ter: For about 5ish years, the win­ter had been pret­ty mild. 2024–2025 win­ter was nor­mal for this area which trans­lates to peri­ods of very cold and snow. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that meant that my plas­tic lay­ers did NOT work well enough. If tem­per­a­tures stay around 20–40F, then the plas­tic is fine. If there are hard freezes for extend­ed peri­ods of time, this is not good enough. All of my plants died except the straw­ber­ry which did­n’t mind at all and looks amaz­ing (in a 10-gal­lon fab­ric pot). The blue­ber­ry most­ly died but final­ly start­ed sprout­ing new shoots from the root late June 2025. I was dis­ap­point­ed and will update again this fall when I set up the new ver­sion of this using hard plas­tic walls instead of the sheet­ing. Stay tuned!

Twin-Wall Polycarbonate Sheet

4′ x 2′ x 0.24″ Poly­car­bon­ate Green House Pan­els. They’re a rigid plas­tic sheet­ing that are shat­ter­proof which sup­pos­ed­ly allows them to with­stand severe weath­er, and keeps the green­house both warm in the win­ter and cool in the sum­mer. The work­ing tem­per­a­ture range is: ‑42°F to 248°F (-44°C to 120°C)

Stay-tuned! I will attempt to attach this to the struc­ture and report when I’m suc­cess­ful!

Notes

9/2025 — Added a snap-on door stop made with a 3D print­er to pre­vent the doors from swing­ing too hard inward. Easy to drill and per­ma­nent­ly attach to PVC pipe if desired. Through­out the grow­ing sea­son, had plants inside then enclo­sure that were able to be pol­li­nat­ed no prob­lem. Doors made it easy to access plants. End­ed up mov­ing the corn plants inside after squir­rel rob­bery. The enclo­sure was a tad too short for the corn, so tas­sels extend­ed out, but suc­cess­ful­ly thwart­ed squir­rels that tried hard to get into the corn (they oblit­er­at­ed the corn tas­sels try­ing to pull the entire plant out). Suc­cess!! Just bought the poly­car­bon­ate pan­els for a new attempt at cre­at­ing a cold frame for the win­ter. Still have yet to attach actu­al door latch­es and am still using a ball

Ball Bungee Cord is easy to use
Door stop that just snaps onto the PVC. Can be per­ma­nent­ly fas­tened. This is not at the moment

August 2024 — It’s been almost a month since test phase start­ed, and squir­rels have left it com­plete­ly alone. No evi­dence of rot­ting, so good air­flow, pol­li­na­tors busi­ly doing their thing, vines climb­ing the cloth like a trel­lis… alto­geth­er very hap­py with its func­tion. Even the bungee cords per­form well and are easy to remove. Still have not secured hinges or installed latch­es… and I’m not sure I want to. It would make for a refined prod­uct, but the bungee cords work well.

August 2025 — Squir­rels robbed me of corn, so moved the pot into the enclo­sure. SUCCESS!!! First true test against the rodents. They des­per­ate­ly want­ed the corn, but could not get in. They even tried to pull the corn up through the top by yank­ing on the tas­sels. All that did was rip the tas­sels off the plant. They nev­er got inside! Yay!! It WORKS!!!

If I were to do it again, I would do sev­er­al things:

  • Buy hard­ware cloth that’s wide enough to not need so much over­lap. Like, one that can span from one side, to the back, and to the oth­er side. The top can be sep­a­rate.
  • If using the gal­va­nized steel wire method of attach­ment, then buy a Wire Twister Tool for Drill. Not only would that save tons of time, but phys­i­cal fatigue
  • Mea­sure the place­ment of the hinges before snap­ping them on
  • Paint it green or brown. White is so stark in the gar­den! Or if you have expend­able income, then buy For­mu­fit’s col­ored PVC
  • Fig­ure out a dif­fer­ent way to attach the hard­ware cloth (Ideas are all expen­sive yet remove­able: 2in Rub­ber Cable Clamps, 2 in Binder Rings, 6in Steel Wire Twist Bar­rel Key­chains, etc.)

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