How to Customize a Car in Michigan

If you love cars, customizing your own ride is an ideal hobby for you. Even if you don't actually do any of the work yourself, it's fun to page through custom-car magazines, picking out features that would look cool on your own car. If you're living or driving in Michigan, you'd better keep a few laws in mind before you start tinting your windows or installing a new sound system. You wouldn't want to create a custom car that you can't legally drive.

• 1

  Complete all necessary repairs on your car before you begin customizing. Your new paint job won't matter if your car quits running. If you're having problems with your engine, brakes, transmission or any other major parts, spend your money fixing those first.

• 2

  Choose a theme for your custom car. Don't just buy a bunch of random parts that looked cool on their own. Chances are, if you haven't imagined a finished product before you began, your car will end up looking mismatched and silly. Page through custom-car magazines and get ideas about what paint jobs, rims and extra features like spoilers look best together. Develop some ideas about the interior of your car that match the exterior.

• 3

  Begin with the interior of your car. Depending on how dramatic you want your customization to be, you can replace all of the paneling with new colors and materials or reupholster the seats in leather or a more luxurious fabric. If you really want to impress your friends, remove the factory seats and replace them with seats that have built-in warmers. Those warmers can make quite a difference during cold Michigan winters.

• 4

  Replace the sound system in your car. The sound system that the manufacturer installed is weak compared to custom offerings. Get a new sound system with a CD player, subwoofers and amplifiers. But obey Michigan's noise laws, which state you are forbidden from making excessive noise. If you're waking up your neighbors, you could have trouble with the police.

• 5

  Customize the exterior of your car. Get a fresh paint job, maybe something with gold flakes or an iridescent candy paint -- just match the interior of your car. Don't change the color of any of your lights or install any new lights such as neon under the carriage; this is illegal in Michigan. Get some new, high quality tires with rims. Your new tires can help you to drive in the snow, while rims are some of the flashiest things you can put on your car. You can add a spoiler to your car and some decals to make it look one-of-a-kind. Don't raise your truck or install a noisy exhaust though; you'd be breaking Michigan's laws.