Police Car pictures / paint job

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Button

74 Dart Swinger
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Location
Killeen, Texas
We just picked up this 1973 Dart Custom with 318, A/C, dual exhaust, and good body. I want to paint it up into a black and white Police cruiser. I have only found one Dart picture as a police car and it was all one color and was on the "Allpar" site, (I think that was what it was). Does anyone have any cool pictures to give us ideas?

4 door front.jpg


4 door rear.jpg
 
I also was curious, does anyone know where 1970's era police vehicle equipment can be found?
 
I have noticed different counties and states are different with paint schemes. I would do a black body with white doors and roof. Check out the movie Smokey and the Bandit. There are several hundred cop cars from the seventies.
 
2 Darts said:
Try this: http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-&p=vintage cop car photos&type=

My favorite 70s vintage cop car.
Click to expand...


I got to see one of these close up in the Alabama Highway Patrol HQ building in Montgomery, AL., a few years ago. The guys decided to put one inside their lobby as a static display and rolled it in on its side through the double doors. For all I know its still there; very cool to see. I became friends with a former AHP Trooper who later jumped over to become an Alabama Bureau of Investigation Special Agent, and he recalled how when he drove one of these on patrol he'd have to stop halfway through his shift to fill up the gas tank again. His opinion was that they weren't practical as patrol vehicles, but they were crazy fun to drive, unless the road was wet.
 
copcar.com is good site for research on colors, trim, etc, that would have been used in that era. Another good site for cop car related items is dippy.org, a sister Mopar site dedicated to M-bodies. A lot of guys over there with a lot of knowledge on cop cars, not just Dips and Gran Furys.
 
gts340,
I think the biggest item I would like to find is a period correct light bar with lights and pa speaker. The long whip antennas from back then are pretty easy to find but the light bar and lights seems hard via the internet searches.
2 Darts,
Thanks for the link, I'll have to check it out later this evening as well as copcar.com that "ramenth" suggested. I'm currently on 24hr Emergency Operations Center duty and it will give me something to do during the night to stay awake.
 
Ramenth,
I got your PM and I went to the www.dippy.org site and it's going to take me some time to go through all the links but it does look pretty interesting. His links to the police cars was what I'll be spending my time on. I'm looking for a light bar for the roof, which seems to be more difficult to find than I thought it would be. It needs to be from the mid 1970's and that's the tough part.
 
The old Motorola radio heads shouldn't be too hard to find & back then we didn't really use the long antennaes. If you're gonna put a screen init, you can fab that up yourself (it's cheaper & easier) and the shotgun rack can be bought from most any police supply shop. don't know what agency you're wanting to duplicate, but I think Federal Signal probably as what you want if you can't find itonany E-bay or copcar sites. To me, the challenging part would be to find the right copcar mechanicals for it. Sure you won't see 'em & it's not as much attention getting, but that stuff is what REALLY made a copcar something to own.
 
Button said:
Ramenth,
I got your PM and I went to the www.dippy.org site and it's going to take me some time to go through all the links but it does look pretty interesting. His links to the police cars was what I'll be spending my time on. I'm looking for a light bar for the roof, which seems to be more difficult to find than I thought it would be. It needs to be from the mid 1970's and that's the tough part.
Click to expand...

Thought maybe you'd find some good stuff on there, especially with the cop car links. Happy researching. If it gets older than this then I'm out of my league.

Hist1980.jpg
 
Ramenth,
That picture of the blue/yellow cruiser (Diplomat), has the type of light bar I'm looking for. The L.E.D. bars are just way too modern for the correct look. Thanks again for the site tips.
 
There's a guy here in NY (Poughkeepsie?) who specializes in cop car restorations, especially on Mopars. Especially from the '70s. If you dig hard enough on dippy.org I'm sure you'll come across his name. Like that car I posted? I wanna build clone of that one of these days. NYS Trooper car in the old "Sunoco" colors... I've owned four M-body cop cars, two of 'em drivers, two of 'em parts cars. Unfortunately here in NY they get stripped of all useable "cop" parts: light bars, spots, wigwag relays, etc.
 
I helped the locals build a "Beat the Heat" car, and found several cool sites on the web for buying/swapping police equipment.

A local restored a 1968 Belvidere police cruiser. It gets a lot of attention. Some of the local departments had old, out of date stuff they were glad to be rid of. Don't cost nothing to ask.

Don't rule out the taxi cab angle either.:cheers:

And since I have a captive audience here, I have an 80 Diplomat 4 door (it's an M-body not an A, sorry) with an 8pt cage that was going to be a Beat the Heat racer. Rust free and VERY cheap!
 
Button, the light bar shown is too new. You need a Federal Visabar. It is just a bar going across with a reolving light on either end. I will find you a picture tomorrow.
 
Yellowdartdave,
I've atached a picture of a car whose paint scheme I'd like to apply to the Dart Custom. More than likely, we will do a simple black/white paint job, light bar, some antenna's, and that would be about it. I bought this car originally as a parts car that wouldn't start. It's dash, seats, and many interior parts were going into my sons 1974 Dart Swinger. But once we got it home my son fired the car up and it's run fine since. We'll probably just tint the windows very dark since the interior will be a mis-match of various parts. We thought it would be cool to take the car to car shows and park it behind the Swinger as if one Dart had pulled the other over for speeding.
Here's the paint scheme we're thinking of.

1975-police.jpg
 
Button,
The 2nd car has the Visabar set-up that would be period correct. The later full bars (unless you find a compact model) will stick out over the edges of the roof.
You might find the 2nd picture rather unique.

74_CHP_Monaco-1.jpg

1976PlymouthALL06.jpg
 
Button said:
Ramenth,
That picture of the blue/yellow cruiser (Diplomat), has the type of light bar I'm looking for. The L.E.D. bars are just way too modern for the correct look. Thanks again for the site tips.
Click to expand...

Alot of them were single dome in center with 2 or 4 spinning lights in white, red, or blue combinations.
Good Luck! See Andy Griffith Show!
 
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