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| My collection of vintage Alabama License plates - 1963, 1964 (2) and 1965 |
Page Eleven: Alphie's Vintage 1964 Alabama License Plate
I have scrounged an original Alabama license plate for all
of my projects cars’ (and motorcycle) year of manufacture and Alphie has one
too. Finding a pristine original plate
would be ideal, but their owners tend to value them more than I do. Fortunately, beat-up rusty plates are reasonably
priced and easy to find on EBay, but they need, like their intended cars, a bit
of work.
BUT! This time I
found an original never issued 1964 Alabama license plate! It’s a plate from Calhoun County (#11), not
Madison (#47) where I hang out. I have
been searching for a 47 tag for about a year, but every one I found was
shredded, trashed, junk. Alphie deserves
a pretty tag.
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| Alphie's Unissued 1964 Alabama Plate |
My tag restoration attempts are acceptable, until it comes to
painting the numbers. The ones I hand
painted looked, well, hand painted. I
was going to send my EBay tags to be professionally restored but then I found the Tag Doctor – look up his website; he has some cool stuff and solid prices.
So other than some pics of my tags, both restored and (partially)
restored, here is some interesting/useless dribble about vintage tags.
Useless Trivia
When I started the Sunbeam Alpine Project, I had a 1965 Alpine,
but if you have read the other posts on this blog, you know that now I’m building a
1964 Alpine – see the Organ Donor
post. I remind you of this so that the
following paragraph, discussing a 1965 plate, will make at least some sense.
The plate I EBayed (back in April of 2019) for Alphie, a
1965 “Heart of Dixie” plate number 11-3047, was rusted and sun-faded to the point that I
was unsure of the original colors, so I went a-Googling. I discovered something interesting from Google, my college
football fanatics…
In 1964 the state
of Alabama issued vehicle license plates decked out in the Crimson and White of
the University of Alabama– Roll Tide!
And in 1965,
Alabama emblazoned plates with the Blue and Orange of Auburn University. War Damn Eagle!
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| 1965 Auburn plate - no lettering |
More Useless Trivia: The “11” on the Auburn plate means it was
issued in Calhoun County in north central Alabama where Anniston is the county
seat. (Finding a specific county is
difficult, but who knows, I might trip over a 1965 plate with the “47” of
Madison County somewhere. (Editor’s Note: I didn’t!)
The “county” number, the first number or two numbers before the dash, are based on county populations as of 1942. So in 1942, Calhoun County was the 11th
most populous county in Alabama, while Madison County was the 47th. (Incidentally, Jefferson was first, with
Mobile and Montgomery counties coming in second and third respectively, hence
their 1,2,3 county numbers.) In 1979, Alabama
officially locked the 1942 numbers.
The “3047” is the serial number of the plate, which lets the
cop know who must pay the ticket.
The “Heart of Dixie” slogan and the embossed heart was added
to plates in 1951.
Registering a Original Vintage Plate
According to Section 40-12-297 of the Code of Alabama, Alabamians
“may request to register an original Alabama license plate, 1976 or previous,
including a restored or refurbished Alabama license plate, issued in the model
year as designated by the manufacturer of the vehicle, of a type license plate
that would have been issued to that category vehicle.” The phrase, “that would have been issued to that category
vehicle,” means you have to use 1964 passenger car tags for 1964 cars, 1964
pick-up tags for 1964 pick-up trucks and, I suppose, 1964 hearse tags for 1964
hearses, if hearses are your thing.
The license plate folks will give me “a permanent vintage
vehicle validation decal” that must be displayed on the lower portion of the plate. So it won’t look exactly like it would have in 1965, but laws are laws, and it’s
very cool that Alabama allows us to use original plates!
Blasting and Cleaning
(Editor’s Note: I
wrote this post last year (April 2019) when I fully intended to restore a tag
for Alphie. Even though I found an
never issues tag, I figure I’ll post my how-to write up because… why the hell not?
I have restored tags before – see the pics. I
restored one for my 63 Corvair Monza and on for my 64 Impala SS – so the write up comes from
at least some experience.)
The first step is finding the clean
metal. I bead blasted, wire wheeled and
sanded both plates to a clean shiny metal.
(The 1964 plate is the one I kept from the 64 Impala SS I restored
back in the 90’s - such a sweet ride! By
the way, the superscript “H” to the right of the "5" means that it was for a pick-up, ¾ ton or less.)
Keeping the “Original Look” – Not Over-Restored
I used a high-build primer to fill rust pits and scratches,
but that’s all. A glass-flat, pristine license
plate looks fake. They came with lumps
from the AL DMV in 1964, so Alphie’s plate will be lumpy too.
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| You can see the tooling impressions - original plates aren't pristine |
Even though I’m restoring the tags, I plan to preserve the
original look. Plates were stamped and
painted at Kilby Prison near Montgomery, and a plate’s original “fit and
finish” was a little shy of awesome. For
example, I can see the outline of the jig, which held the stamping dies
indented above and below the numbers, and the area between the numbers and
letters was never completely flat. I’m
leaving tooling marks like these visible.
Similarly, of the original plates I have dealt with, the
tooling often cuts through the metal at the edge of a letter or number. Both of my plates have these cuts, and I will
not fix them either. (See the pics)
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| A flashlight behind the plate shows where the die cut through the metal - original plates aren't pristine |
I am going to straighten the edges and bang out any injuries
the plates suffered during their time on and off their original vehicle over
the past 54 years, just not the lumps from their original pressing.
Base Coat
Dupli-Color has engine paint in the base colors very close
the red and blue I need. A couple of
coats with some light wet sanding between coats and a coat of clear for extra
gloss should do it. Be careful with the
clear coat, it often crinkles the base coat under it.
Lettering Paint
A roller system on (what I assume) was an assembly line setup applied the original lettering paint.
Reproducing the original roller application is difficult, makes a big
mess and doesn’t work very well – at least that’s what I read on the
internet. At any rate, making a Rube Goldberg roller system to paint the letters on one plate doesn’t make much sense. So Testor’s model paint and a steady hand are
the call for lettering.
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| Hand painted model paint just isn't good enough |
(Editor’s Note: Here’s where the post diverges from the facts
of Alphie’s new tag. I hand lettered the
1963 plate, and you can see that the lettering looks uneven and “redone,” in short it looks terrible.
The original lettering paint was sorta reflective, not very,
but sorta. Testor’s model paint ain’t
reflective, in fact it’s not very good lettering paint at all. I read that some restorers sprinkle
reflective granules into the lettering paint to reproduce the paint’s
reflectivity. The granules are usually
more reflective than the original paint, so it’s a little better than original.)
The model
paint doesn’t hold up against rocks and other debris that bang against the
tag. Check out the chipping on the 1963
tag, which I used as the front tag of my Corvair.
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| I hand painted the lettering on the 63 plate It's acceptable, but still looks "redone" |
Go with the Pros
Garage plate restoration is acceptable, but if you want a
slick plate that doesn’t look like you rescued it from a barn wall
somewhere, get it professionally done. I
started hand painting the EBay 1964 tag, but I was not happy with the results
of the first couple of letters. Honestly,
it looked like it was restored during arts & crafts at summer
camp.
I decided that I
was never going to get the look I wanted by hand painting. I found the Tag Doctor's website while I was
researching blokes who restore plates professionally.
Professional plate restorers’ prices range from reasonable
to flagrant, depending on what level of restoration you want. Do a quick web search, you’ll find them. Since they restore tags every day, they have
invested in the right tools and paints to make your tag look like it did back
in the day.
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| A close-up of Alphie's never-issued 1964 plate with its straight from the prison lettering! |
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| A shout out to the guy with the vintage tags |
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