I remember when the sign appeared and was happy to see it. It also looked pretty good, but was slightly odd due to differences in the reflectors around the perimeter. The sign faded more rapidly than the similar I-5 sign on the right side of the freeway. It had a nice, long life and should feel proud about the job it did.

Reflective signs have a finite lifetime and the rest of the sign was probably in need (where "need" is defined in large part by whether or not the feds are picking up the tab) of replacement by then.

> Why replace it just to make it "official"?

The original sign barely had enough space to fit the I-5 logo over to the left. The “fake” (and I use that term loosely) had 5 & 110 crammed next to each other and 101 way over on the right. The “official” sign spread out the choice of 3 freeways evenly, increasing readability.

Imagine if CalTrans knew about the fake sign, and the bolts failed prematurely relative to their official signs and fell on a car.

CalTrans actually found out about it after 9 months, inspected it, then left it up for an additional 8 years before the entire sign was replaced.

https://gizmodo.com/how-one-fed-up-dude-fixed-an-awful-highw...

> For about nine months, only a small group of people knew that the Interstate 5 shield hanging above the 110 freeway was a forgery. Then one of Ankrom's friend leaked the story to a local paper. And that's how Caltrans found out.

> Ankrom had hoped he could get his sign back from Caltrans after they took it down; he figured he would hang it in an art gallery. But Caltrans didn't take the sign down. His guerrilla sign had passed the Caltrans inspection.

> More than eight years after after Ankrom's sign went up, he got call from a friend who noticed some workers taking it down. It had been replaced with as part of routine maintenance.

Shit happens

https://australianweldingsolutions.com.au/tullamarine-freewa...