Evening all,

Today I got new number plates made and fitted by Arnold Clark, it was only when they removed the rear plate did they notice the huge mistake the previous owner/PDI centre must've made...

The number plate was held on by screws that had been drilled through the tailgate, and not attached properly by the factory mounts that came with the car!!!

Where do I stand with this? The car was bought used from a dealer about 8 months ago, and previous to that it was a Hertz hire car.

I simply cannot comprehend how insanely stupid one must be to fit number plates by drilling through the car's bodywork! As as a result the tailgate has been compromised and will most likely rust due to the holes in it.

Sounds about right.

Mine were fitted with screws so large they ripped out the mounts on extraction.

Plug the bad holes with something like Sugru and remount to the original holes or use tape so no holes are used at all.

Team Torquesteer sell a foam pad kit (front/rear) for £9.50.

The pads are numberplate sized so will stick like the proverbial !Removed! to a blanket.

I just bought a set so I can mount plate surrounds and get them to sit flush rather than stand out on the ends and tempt idle hands to pull them off.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Ford OC mobile app

If there's no sign of rust yet around the edges of the holes I'd be tempted to use touch-up paint to cover up any bare metal then put a bit of PVC tape over the holes.

You can pull the trim panel off the inside of the tailgate to see how it looks within the tailgate itself, you may have been lucky if there's no rust on the bare metal - the inner panels of the tailgate will still have corrosion protection from the factory e-coat process even though paint coverage is pretty minimal in there.

While the tape sounds like an iffy repair, when we used to make the Jag X-Type, that had a lot of holes in the outer bootlid panel to account for mounting different number plate plinths etc required by law in different markets. Would make it very complex in manufacture to stamp different spec boot lids for all the different countries so it was 1 stamping then with the redundant holes blanked off with pvc patches after the car had been through the paint process.

Do I use the Sugru on the part of the tailgate where the screws have penetrated it? If I'm going to remount the number plates to the factory fit mounts then I'm going to have to buy new plates again, because the new plates have been drilled and attached in the same place as the old ones.

The Sugru will form a waterproof rubber plug that will act as a home made grommet.

It's good stuff and sets in about 24 hours.

I love the stuff, it's very versatile.

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=251469194792&alt=web

B&Q used to sell it but stopped as soon as it became popular :p

Sent from my SM-G900F using Ford OC mobile app