OK what's a good product for cleaning very dirty exterior painted plastic? I have a "birthday" truck (bought a left-over 2018 end of April this year that had been sitting on dealers lot for almost a year), the painted plastic between the grill and bumper doesn't respond to wash detergent and hard scrubbing with a rag. For grins I tried a little CitrusSafe BBQ grill cleaner on a small area, it got about 50% of the baked-in dirt up but still noticeable difference between painted aluminum and painted plastic.

Suggestions?

 

It’s hard to tell from the pics but it doesn’t look dirty. It looks like the paint is discolored. Maybe a clay bar will help. I’d try some light buffing. If neither of those make a difference, see if the dealer will fix it.

 

You're looking at the paint color difference between plastic and metal. It's common, especially in that color.

 

No doubt a little of the color difference is sun fading (it was on dealer lot for about a year), and some expected color difference between painted metal vs plastic, but even though hard to see in the pics the majority is dirt/road film/whatever that in places shows as dirt "streaks". As mentioned the CitrusSafe lifted about 1/2 of the dirt "streaks" but not all of it, I figured probably some product stronger than a citrus-based cleaner might be able to finish the job...

 

My platinum white truck does that in that area. The color is very slightly different but the painted plastic also seems to hang on to a layer of film where the painted aluminum doesn’t.
I’ve had good luck using Meguiar’s Cleaner Wax to get that film off.

 

Thanks I'll give that a try.