British bike brothers, how did you mount this?

What was a proper way to mount this number plate with the brackets shown?

Drill holes in either side of the front mudguard/fender, and mount it under the headlamp.
On full bump, it will rise up and smash the headlamp, and trash the numberplate.

On non-british bikes, you'd ditch those strange looking brackets, and fit it ALONG the top of the mudguard.
So would smarter-than-average british owners too !!
Vincent owners fit them ABOVE the headlamp, so it becomes a mini flyscreen/bug deflector.........

What ye fit it to though ?

Thanks for the suggestions. I figured it would go over the headlight bucket but wasn't sure if anyone recognized this particular bracket and its application or not.

It was pretty common in the day to see the curved number plate mounted as with your brackets, over the headlamp...look in the old magazines.
For a very neatly machined little bracket to mount it in the conventional way, along the front mudguard, see the 50s and 60s Triumph parts catalog.
Either way of mounting would be "period correct" (as they say) for a restoration.

It would have been more common to see the number plate mounted this way, without the steel "pedestrian slicer" backing plate, which looks as if it was added as reinforcement because the number plate had cracked.


Front plates on motorcycles ceased to be a legal requirement in the UK from August 1975.

Perfect, thanks guys

Scott

I've got a feeling that the gubberment in the UK either banned, or discouraged the use of the "number plate on the front mudguard" arrangement because as L.A.B. said it's a pedestrian slicer. Mind you I can think of a few pedestrians who need slicing!! That's another thing altogether.
Most after the 70s were over the headlight.
Are front number plates still required?
cheers
wakeup

wakeup said:

I've got a feeling that the gubberment in the UK either banned, or discouraged the use of the "number plate on the front mudguard" arrangement because as L.A.B. said it's a pedestrian slicer.

Are front number plates still required?

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As I'd said in my previous post, front number plates (of any description) on motorcycles were "no longer required" by law, from August 1975, therefore owners could remove them if they so wished, and new bikes registered from then on didn't have them (although number plate suppliers, pleading loss of income, immediately increased their prices so the single rear plate cost as much as the three :evil: ).
Front number plates were only technically 'banned' many years later. Motorcycles registered from 1st. September 2001 cannot legally display front plates, although there has been the occasional murmur about reintroducing some form of forward facing identification-as without a front plate, motorcycles can't be identified by the myriad of front plate reading traffic 'safety' (enforcement and surveillance) cameras we now have in the UK.

wakeup said:

Most after the 70s were over the headlight.

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I can't really agree with that, as I remember it, the mudguard-mounted plates were still the most common.

L.A.B. said:

...although there has been the occasional murmur about reintroducing some form of forward facing identification-as without a front plate, motorcycles can't be identified by the myriad of front plate reading traffic 'safety' (enforcement and surveillance) cameras we now have in the UK.

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There was talk of (re introducing ) that here in the last few years to reduce fatalities. (Nothing to do with speed camera's or some of the 'disrespectful photo's captured)
My Sunbeam still has the front bracket where the number plate was mounted cross ways at the front of the mudguard like an air brake.