Today was a Monday, with a day of annual leave booked, and a friend coming to help me on the MG. A sunny September day awaited. I hauled the MG out of garage (no unnecessary start ups here, right Dad?) and set to on fixing the rear number plate.

As I am proceeding without rear bumpers, I had given myself a challenge as in the original set up, the number plate lights are mounted on the inside of the over riders. I solved this by observing that on my friend’s rubber bumper MGB, the number plate mount had integrated lamps – ah ha. A search on eBay resulted in a used number plate mount arriving some weeks ago which I had painted with black Hammerite and was ready to fix. The number plate itself was a metal unit with silver on black lettering which needed to be drilled. It is always a bit scary to drill into lovely new shiny painted metal, but using masking tape and progressively larger drill bits I had the holes drilled. They weren’t in quite the right place, being a couple of mm out, so I slotted them both with a circular file (I know, just shoot me). Before I put the assembly together, screws, spacers, washers and all, I used a dremel tool to clean up the heads of the screws as they were looking a bit ‘used’. Proud of myself. I mounted the rear plate and discovered it was not quite level. Out with the file again and managed to make it mostly straight. Stepping back, the installation looks good, in my humble opinion.