Alrighty, Update time since a few things have happened.
I finally finished my small bumper swap, the big bumpers came off the second weekend I had the car (around a year ago) and i've been driving it around locally without bumpers while I waited to get a set of small bumpers off an earlier year car. These are hard to find for a good price, but after a long time of waiting and looking all over, I came up with a pretty decent set of bumpers.
The front actually showed up first in may, but I had no brackets for it and was still trying to hunt down a set of those, so the rear ended up going on first as the one I found came with brackets.
some shots of the rear installed.
Then last week I finally got front brackets in, and was able to slap the front bumper on last night. so the small bumper swap is complete!
Painted the rear blue / white striped valance solid white today as well, the front I might paint as well, we'll see.
and here's a before and after. big bumper vs small bumper.
I also started working on a new grill, progress is slow on this because I got so much stuff going on, and the car already has a grill so this isnt a priority, but the shell is done. just need to make brackets and fill in the open space with expanded metal.