"Bumpsiders" plaques: Extra plaques now for sale!!

[Calfdemon]

I have something that I have wanted to do for a while and when my financial situation improves in the near future, I will take some steps to do this. But in my idea, I would want to use "FORDification.com" and make it available to anyone here. And this is not a profit situation, so we can get that out of the way right now...

What I want to do is get an old school car club plaque made up in the style of the 50's and 60's hot rod clubs (square metal plaque to hang from bumper or put in window). There are places where you can still get them made and I have already researched it. Most of your old car clubs would have the name of the club and the logo, and then would have the city, or area on the plaque as well.

I don't want to join a club or make this a membership thing, but I would love to rock one of the old school club style plaques on my truck when it is done. And instead of the area like SoCal, or Los Angeles, or New York, or whatever the clubs would put on their plaque; in its place, I would want to put FORDification.com and anyone on this site could buy a plaque from me as well once I get them done.

I would front the start-up fees and recover them on the back end and make an initial order for however many plaques people would commit to buying. Then I could figure out the cost per plaque up front and get them made. No profit anywhere and if there ever ended up being any profit, it would be sent to Keith via PayPal as a site donation. The only place where there might be money made is on secondary orders as the start up cost is a one time fee that would be split across the initial order. Any future plaques would be sold as the same price to be fair to everyone, and the extra money would then go to the site.

Anyway, I already have a "club name" in mind and from what I could find online, it has not been used that I could see. And yes, it is Ford specific... I think people will really like it. I will not reveal the name until everything is designed and we are ready to move forward, but I bring this up now to see if it would be okay to make this a Fordification.com item. I know Keith is not around much anymore, if at all. But maybe one of the mods could get word to him and see if I would have permission to do something like this for the members?

I would also like to see who might be interested in something like this. Here are examples of the style of plaque that I am talking about: http://www.relicsandrods.com/Cities/San ... Valley.htm
I am not talking about the modern day lowrider style plaque you see in back windows.

I would guess that the final cost of each plaque would be under $50 after setup fees and would be cheaper the more that are ordered as the setup would be split across the initial order. So the more interested, the cheaper they get. I would guess somewhere between $30 and $50 each.

[basshound71]

I think it might be cool. I used to have one that my dad was in. Scavengers Pond Creek, OK

[Calfdemon]

Its basically the same idea as the Fordification stickers, but in the style of an old car club plaque. However, there would still be a "car club" name and a logo of some sort and the Fordification.com would be the location making it kind of a worldwide "club" with no meetings and no membership fees!

[averagef250]

Cast or etched plaques?

I ask because I think etched plaques are a lot classier than stickers and am setting up to use the process for some of my products. If etched is what you're thinking you should PM me.

[papabug71]

I like the idea & I'll be all over one when you get them ready.

In the end you'll have to ok it with Keith as he owns the domain name. I'm sure he'll be cool with it as long as you're just recooping production costs. He was fine with me having my own FORDification.com stickers printed up a few years back.

[Calfdemon]

I was planning on going with cast since that is what they had back then and the look I am going for. Other than the fact the there would be a web address on it, I want these to look old school.

And I definately want Keith's okay to move forward which was the reason for posting the idea...

[averagef250]

I was planning on going with cast since that is what they had back then and the look I am going for. Other than the fact the there would be a web address on it, I want these to look old school.

And I definately want Keith's okay to move forward which was the reason for posting the idea...

Reverse etching goes back to the middle ages and was perfected in the 1400's. It's still commonly used, affordable and you can do some really cool stuff with it. Just an idea.

[motzingg]

there is a foundry that does some work for me that does a lot of these kind of plaques, repro emblems, stuff like that. pm me if you need a contact, they are super reasonable, and very happy to do short 'runs' especially if you provide the tooling.

[DuckRyder]

As I am sure you know Keith is the only one that can give permission.

I like the idea, I think it would be neat and quite a bit classier than stickers (no offense intended).

Since I don't get out much, how big are we talking - is it something that would bolt onto where a license plate goes, or one of the smaller things I sometimes see on rods and old Models A's and stuff...

I would like to do another run of shirts too...

[popeyes71]

T- shirts and plaques, both of those sound cool to me! The price range for the plaque sounds reasonable. Keep us posted.

[Calfdemon]

As I am sure you know Keith is the only one that can give permission.

I like the idea, I think it would be neat and quite a bit classier than stickers (no offense intended).

Since I don't get out much, how big are we talking - is it something that would bolt onto where a license plate goes, or one of the smaller things I sometimes see on rods and old Models A's and stuff...

I would like to do another run of shirts too...

The "traditional" size of the hot rod plaques from the 50's and 60's were around 5"x8". There are some that are smaller which I have also seen on the backs of some Model As etc... I can pretty much get whatever size up to about 5"x9" and then it goes to a different price range. I was thinking around the 5"x8" size though so it would be smaller than a license plate, but still big enough to see or read. The company I am planning on using also can do license plate toppers which I thought might be cool, but are for the most part, not usable on our trucks as they go on top of plate. Most of our trucks have the plate mounted in a fashion that anything off the top of the plate will either not be seen, or get in the way of an opening tailgate.

The square (or custom shape) plaques can be mounted however the person wants and displayed in any fashion. I would probably hang mine under my rear bumper as my truck will not be lowered. But others can put it on a bumper, on a tailgate, in a rear window, or whatever you can think of.

As for everyone suggesting contacts, I appreciate it. If I end up having some issues with who I have settled on, or if someone elses contact can significantly beat the price I get then we can look at one of them. But I have already spoken to several companies that do this and have two in mind that I have a good rapport with and have a long history of top quality results with these plaques. The cost with one company Including setup fee, paint/buffing, and my shipping costs, we are looking at around $40 a plaque for a small order and the prices go down from there depending on how many people initially order. That price would be for a order of 10-24 plaques with 10 being the minimum I can get. It would go down a little if we ordered more. But those are with painting included.

There is another company that will do it for about $10 less, but they will not do any paint on orders of less than 50 and the paint really makes these pop. I do not think there would be interest in an order of 50 so I figured the extra $10 to get a painted final product is worth it.

[Calfdemon]

I had some time today to mess around with my idea and here is a rough draft of what I came up with. The name I originally had in mind, I changed as I was designing it to make it more universal to the membership here but I have other names I can put in there. The design I made utilized the FORDification.com font and truck found on the business cards that someone made a while back and I used a relatively simple font for the "club name" and a style that looks like a throwback to the hot rod heyday. I did not want anything too modern looking. And although the FORDification font is a bit modern, the simple and throwback style of the "club name" offsets that in my opinion.

In my original plan, the paint color was going to be a Ford blue. But with the way the design came about, it needs to be black because the tires of the truck and lines on teh truck will be the painted color. Black is the only color that wont screw up the truck.

The black portions would be recessed in the plaque and painted, while the white portions would be raised and brushed aluminum color.



The fine black line around the image is only there to offset the border and wont be there on the final plaque. The edges of the plaque will be the raised aluminum (where the white is on the picture).

The original name I was going to use was "FORDICATORS". But then BUMPSIDERS seems to work better. I also considered BUMPSIDES, BUMP BRIGADE and a few others but I kinda like the way it is now. I am not opposed to suggestions however, so feel free to give some input. Again, this is just a rough draft and something to gauge interest and see if Keith will approve the idea.

[SoCalExile]

I vote for FORDicators.

Either way I'll go in on one.

[Calfdemon]

If people do not want Bumpsiders and more want Fordicators, then I can easily re-do this. Although with Fordicators, I would use a different font and layout, and the 67-72 would not be there in that design. I put the 67-72 there in reference to the bump, but Fordicators is more of a play on the word Fornicators or Fabricators (whichever way you want to look at it ). I can play around with the design and come up with a few different things as more people chime in.

In the meantime, I have both a PM and an Email in to Keith pointing him at this thread as without his permission, then this is dead in the water. Although, I could still make a plaque without the web address (and I probably would). I just think it would be cool to advertise the site on our trucks and this is a cool way to do it!

[Calfdemon]

I will post another version up with "Fordicators" on Monday when I have time to do it.

In the meantime, does anyone have a better way to get ahold of Keith? I have emailed him and sent him a PM. But I have heard that event he moderators haven't heard from him in a while.