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Posted by: cowtowncop

Anyone know of any good tricks of the trade for cleaning or modifying your cruisers? I know the departments that don't have issued cruisers could probably care less, but for those of us who have take home cruisers and want to keep them sharp, what tricks do you use?

Some of the ones I have learned over the years are;

• using a new paintbrush to clean the radio console and vents from dust.

• Using leather luster or shape up boot polish on the mirror LED's or strobes that tend to turn gray or oxidized, the polish lasts for a long time and looks as if it was just armor all'ed.

• Using zip ties to keep the hub caps from falling off the rims (before they were bolted on)

• A small 2" convex mirror placed on the rear view mirror to watch prisoners

• Wiring a brake light kill switch on a on/off/on momentary spring push switch, that only kills the brake lights when held down, for rolling in totally blacked out, or flipping around for a car stop
• Using pledge instead of armor all on the dashboard

etc....

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Posted by: Mikey682

I wipe tireshine type gel or spray on the black flooring after cleaning it. It makes the flooring a little slippery though, so careful on the driver's side.

A toothbrush and a full bottle of 409 is good for cleaning up a nasty, unkempt interior and radio console area.

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Posted by: Rock

Remove all weapons and drop 50 bucks to the area illegal immigrant. He'll get the cruiser gleaming inside and out!

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Posted by: MM1799

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rock Remove all weapons and drop 50 bucks to the area illegal immigrant. He'll get the cruiser gleaming inside and out!

Rock; I think you mean "undocumented migrant".
50 bucks? You're getting ripped off. Show them your weapons and cool uniform and they'll leave before getting paid.

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Posted by: Wolfman

A few things I have heard about here & there...

Lemon pledge on plastic, vinyl and plexiglass. When you polish furniture, you are not cleaning wood you are cleaning polyurethane, which is...plastic. "Plastic polish" is a ripoff, buy me beer with the money you save.

Hot water and Simple Green on the rubber floormats. Be liberal with it, scrub it with a brush, and use a shop vac to suck up the puddles of dirty water. Hit it with a light spray of Lemon Pledge when dry and you'll have a shiny floor that's not quite as slippery as it would be with other treatments.

If you want to clean the engine compartment, spray Simple Green on a cool or warm (not hot) engine, let it soak a bit, scrub with a brush and rinse with a light spray of water. Use compressed air and/or a wet vac to remove water from the engine. Yeah, might be a good idea to disconnect the battery first as well, especially if you're some sort of spaz. Be very careful around the plug wells as water in there will cause misfires and a shitty running engine. When it is clean and dry, spray the hell out of it with Armor All. This should be the ONLY place in the car you use Armor All. Close the hood and drive around for a few days. The Armor All will vaporize from the hot surfaces and coat the plastic and rubber. After a coupla days open the hood, wipe down the excess and you will have an engine bay any whacker would be proud of.

Touch ups:
Rubber pushguard bumpers - shoe edge dressing.
Tailpipes - Brillo pads and Brasso
Glass - RainX
Paint - start with a clay bar, using as directed to remove overspray, embedded dirt, tar and tree crap. RInse well, then wash with a good quality carwash soap. Dry, then hit it with a coat or 3 of a carnauba wax. Buff it out, for maintenance waxes try Collinite #845 Electric Insulator Wax.
Antenna - Stainless & chrome - Brasso
Antenna - Black finish - touch up with a light spray paint (take it off the car first, dumbass) if necessary
Cleaning wax buildup from around adhesive decals and letters - edge of a seized driver's license works well and should not scratch the paint.
Grille - Ha! Good luck. Get a spare.
Wheel covers - the new ones (2003+) don't fall off, they are held on with threaded plastic nuts. If yours fall off you're being a pussy when tightening them. If you want to look like a dork, go ahead and thread zip ties through them. If you have a pre-2003 Ford, find a set of wheel covers that fasten with the wire hoop on the reverse instead of the metal hooks. The hooks squeak and fall off. The hoops don't. You can find a set of the hoop covers fairly cheap If you don;t want to spend the money on the right wheel covers, go ahead and use zip ties. Dork.
Hazy headlight lenses and lightbar plastic - Light to moderate use of Brasso to clean the plastic, followed by a paste wax to protect. Clean strobe tubes and reflectors with Windex or an alcohol-type cleaner. Make sure gaskets are snug to keep spiders and crap out. Protect the glass form skin oils and grime. You may want to reverse the front and rear lightbar lenses between summer and winter so one side does not always pick up the sand and salt residue at 100+ MPH.

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Posted by: sf3pox1

Castrol's SuperClean is great stuff that will clean anything. It is very strong and will remove paint from the body if you let it sit. Small amounts, or watered down a little bit is perfect. We use it from any kind of oil and grease stains to organic type stains.

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