I do indeed. Today, I’ve got one of the most inconsequential, niche mods to share with you. It’s one of those, “If you know, you know.” type of things, except in this case, even if you don’t know you will by the time I’m done with you – hence, I got you covered. Let’s begin.
Probably the best place to start is to give you some context and a bit of background so the mod won’t seem so strange or pointless. Yup, let’s start there. If you’ve ever lived in Japan and owned, or at least observed, a car there, then this mod will make a bit more sense. If you haven’t though – and I assume most of you haven’t – then let’s talk about license plates; specifically JDM license plates. JDM license plates aren’t so greatly different than USDM or CDM plates physically. They’re pretty much the same size, are constructed similarly, and the purpose is identical. Where they differ mainly, is in the graphic design department, and the holes are further apart. There’s also another common point of difference and that is the prefectural seal applied to every plate and vehicle. The prefectural seal is a small device that covers one of the mounting bolts, usually the upper left bolt, whose sole purpose is to prevent theft and/or tampering of the vehicle’s license plate. Typically made of metal, it’s a small permanent circular cover that encloses the top of the mounting bolt and is designed so that it won’t allow access to the bolt unless it’s destroyed in the process. The idea being that it makes it easy to see that the plate may have been illegally tampered with and also to prevent thieves from possibly wanting to steal a vehicle’s plate since it will be near impossible to use on another vehicle because seals are strictly controlled. For reference, they look like this:
As you can see in the pic, the seal is on the upper left-hand bolt and has a character on it, which is usually the first character of the prefecture’s name. You’ll also notice that it looks very similar to the cover in the pic of my BRZ’s plate at the top of the post, and that’s the point. Today’s mod is the installation of a JDM Subaru STI License Plate Bolt Cover which I’ve linked to here for your convenience (No affiliation, only info; I make nothing if you buy one.). The cost is ¥2,090 and with shipping it worked out to ¥3,937, which translated to $14.52 USD for the cover and $28.40 USD total for the order at the time I bought it. Yeah, it’s a bit pricey for something so tiny, but it’s an import-only item, so 仕方がない (that’s life). The reason I bought it should be obvious now – I wanted to emulate a JDM license plate seal and it looks the part. For certain, that’s because it’s made to match the actual seal cover and give a unified look to the bolts on the plate. Of course, it doesn’t have the character for the prefecture on it like a legit seal, so it has the STI logo instead. From anything more than a foot or two away, though, no one will ever notice and even if they did, unless they know what they’re looking at, they won’t care. FWIW though, I did find some accurate fake seal covers after I ordered this one, but they’re notably more expensive and at least this is a genuine JDM Subaru product, so I’m good. Here’s what comes in the box:
There’s the seal itself, the logo plate, a silicon washer, an instruction sheet, and an alignment guide for placing the logo plate correctly. Installation is stupid easy – take out your upper left-hand bolt, pass it through the base of the cover, add the silicon washer between the cover and the plate and fasten the whole setup back onto the plate. Next you screw on the cover’s cap and tighten it via the slot with a flathead screwdriver. Lastly, you mount the alignment guide to the plate over the cover with a bit of tape so it’s square, then align and stick on the logo plate to the cap. That’s it. Takes all of five minutes to do and the final result is what you see in the pics up top and below. It looks like a JDM plate seal and that’s the goal. Totally niche, totally JDM, and totally tiny and unnoticeable unless you know what you’re looking at. Welcome to the club.
