The Police Theme
The police theme was pretty simple to come up with. A black chassis and a white parts car is all it took. Would be more com plete with a white roof, but this is reversible if it grows old.
Light Bar
My light bar is an Federal Signal AeroDynic. It has 6 rotating lights powered by a single electric motor and transfered through lots of little gears. It also has 2 forward facing 50 Watt halogen bulbs and 2 reward facing ones. The siren is placed in the center metal housing.
I found this laying in the front seat of a car on the other side of the junkyard from an Ambulance. It was VERY dirty. Some of the lenses were cracked as well. I brought it home and started fixing it up. First I removed the lenses. For an ambulance they were in the order RWRW-WRWR with red ends on both sides. I took them appart and put all the reds on the driver's side and all the whites on the passenger side as per my observations of police cars. I cracked some of the 20 year old lenses doing this, but they went back together quite well. I cleaned everything, extended some wires and hooked the light bar up to a battery. To my amazement every reflector still turned great and every single bulb worked. The cleaning made it look 100% better. I then used some car polish on them for about an hour and almost all of the age was taken away. The cloudy lenses quickly looked just as clear as ever. Next I tinted the clear side to be blue using some vinyl dye. The end result looks great in action. Watch the video! (1.6MB Quicktime)
Siren
The original siren from the ambulance was rolling around inside the middle of the light bar. It was so rusted up it wasn't even worth using. The siren was pretty cheap; I bought it on eBay. It claims to have 10 differnet sirens, 60 songs, a PA and best of all 10 animal sounds. Haha. One day I might add a less Micky Mouse microphone to the system so I dont look like I'm singing Karaoke.
Graphics and Other Details
I do plan on one day adding the appropriate stickers for the police theme. Probably a star or something on the door, some D.A.R.E stickers, a number on the roof. I'm also planning on having Sande from Drift 411 design a nice "Drift 411" sticker to look like a "Dial 911" that you'll see on most police cars.
Legality
I'm still not sure how legal it would be to drive a car around with a red-blue light bar. I have joined the www.policecar.com message board to ask this question. I will probably end up making a red-blue fabric cover to go over the light. Also, the light will be removable just in case. I will talk to the Maryland State Police to see what the laws in this area are before I take the car out on the road with the light bar. This is primarily a trailered racecar so this isn't a real issue.
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