Dealer installed license plate incorrectly! Now what?
 

Hey guys,

So I purchased my FRS brand-new from the Livermore California dealership. After owning the car for about one week, I decided to take the black bracket off of the front bumper and noticed that they installed the bracket incorrectly. They installed additional screws drilling into the painted part of the bumper. After discovering this I contacted the dealership right away. The dealership stated that they were instructed by Toyota to install the front license plate this way. At this point I have contacted Scion to try and get someone there to help me. Anyone with any ideas on how I can get this resolved?

What you want to happen:

Toyota provides you a new bumper cover free of charge that looks like nothing was ever wrong.

What will actually happen:

That is the way the car is designed to comply with the law. Tough noogies. Buy some little plastic plugs to cover the hole, pick up a paint pen to color match them to the rest of the car. This is what google turned up first, I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives out there.

http://www.bumperplugs.com/index.php...gory&path=1_11

Edit: You can whine and moan and may get some success but I haven't had great experiences with dealerships around here and Toyota doesn't do much to force them to make customers happy, sorry if my post sounded snarky, best of luck.

This is true. I guess I feel that because they put the bracket on incorrectly, that they are responsible to fix it. If I found the issue before the paperwork was signed, they would have fixed it. So to keep the customer satisfaction, they should acknowledge there mistake.

I got the dealer to repaint my bumper, I don't know how similar your situation is.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70900

This is technically how the dealer is told to install these, or at least somewhere close to that. Is this what yours looks like?
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...617_130508.jpg

Try to complain if that's what they did, but not sure you're guaranteed any replacements. Painting the plugs sounds like a decent alternative if they won't cover a new bumper.

Not to that extent, but yes

That is terrible, very glad my salesman, @jamies31 asked me if I wanted to mount it to the bumper or if I was going to get a tow hook mount.

Although that's probably the difference between having a salesman who's a salesman and a salesman who is also an enthusiast that drives the car he sells

The peoples republic of California requires a front plate. Your dealer installed the front plate holder as instructed by manufacturer.

Was the plate holder on there when you bought it or did they install it after you agreed to the purchase?

Did you specifically say "don't install the front plate holder"?

I dunno man seems an uphill battle to me.

Yeah, this isn't my car. I got lucky and was in a rush so I just grabbed the plates from the dealer and declined having them do the install. If they had done the install, I'm sure it would have ended badly. I ended up just making my own bracket in the end:
http://i735.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps3eb23d24.jpg

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55552

You know your radiator and A/C unit need that area open to keep cool. Hopefully your engine doesn't overheat.

My guess is that it disturbs flow, but that the actual volumetric flow through the unit is more or less the same. As flow impacts the plate, it going to essentially funnel around and down past the plate. It's been like this for 20K miles without an issue.

I agree. If just part of the license plate blocking a small amount of opening is causing overheating and the A/C to not work well with street driving, then you have some serious problems.

If I had to put my plate on I'd do it like @kodyo the plate being located low and impacting flow would only be a problem in the two harshest conditions, bumper to bumper traffic in >100 degree temperatures and tracking.

The plate can be removed for tracking and after ~2 years I have never been hassled for not having a front plate. Modern cars are built with enough margin that I wouldn't worry about the loss of the ~50 square inches of inlet flow out of the 400+, you have a coolant temperature gauge for a reason, use it.

No. It will cause more turbulence, and will degrade the efficiency of the stock set up slightly. But would not cause failure.

But because I'm not an Aerospace Engineer, I ran it past my fiancé, who is one semester shy of completing her coursework on her doctorate in computational fluid dynamics, I asked her. She said its fine.


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