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The Newport's bumper shocks are 3 inches longer than those from the NYB so after changing the bumper only, I had to then change the shocks. No big deal.
The headlight door motor control relay is hidden WAY up inside the dash of the NYB behind the speedometer.
This was a big challenge to remove. I don't think I would ever try to remove it if I weren't
parting out the car anyway. I reinstalled it on the engine side of the firewall in the Newport
for easy accessibility.
Even though the hood on the NYB looks identical to the one on the Newport, they are different enough to make the fit look bad. I also had to change the hood (and paint it). You may notice that the green on the hood and quarters doesn't exactly match the green on the header panel. In actuality, the header panel is the correct green. The front clip was painted in February 2000 and it didn't quite match. I plan to have the whole car painted before too long to rectify this problem.
The pracical reason for doing this project is that the existing header panel had a chunk missing out of it
near the left headlight.
After I got enough taken apart so as to start reassembly, it looked pretty aweful. To think, this is my
daily driver!
I couldn't get the bumper to quite match up correctly. You can see here how the left side is farther
forward than the right.
I stripped the grille, chrome, and lights out of the header panel so I could work on the paint job
unincumbered. This was an excellent approach.
When the painting was done, I replaced the chrome and lights. I did not reinstall the grille yet
because it would be easier to bolt the header panel to the car with the grille removed.
After all that, this is the finished product.
Later on, I was able to get a correct 1978 Grille so I replaced the 1977 grille.
