I have a bumper cover to replace my damaged front cover on my 96 Accord LX. My Hanes manual tells me I need to remove the front headlight assembly to remove the cover, which is true in that there are these plastic inserts and plastic screws all along the top of the cover that hold it in place and two of them are under the head light assembly and a third under each of the turn signal light assemblies. My Hanes manual said to go to a different chapter for removal of the head light assembly and there it said I needed to remove the bumper cover first. Visually looking at where the various retention screws/bolts holding the front headlamp assembly in place are located, gives me the same impression, I have to remove the bumper cover first, but I can't do that because I can't get the plastic screw/retaining inserts out that are below the headlamp assembly. Technically, I can remove the old bumper, I can rip it out, breaking the holes where those insert/screws are under the headlamps, but the installation afterwards, I can either put in the head lamps and the bumper cover with only the two inserts on the outsides where the signal light assemblies are and the three in the middle where the grill is and forget the two on each side that sit underneath the headlamp assemblies, or forget about putting the headlamp assembly back in. Obviously, not having headlamps is not an option, but I don't want to have the cover not fully secured on the top. Anyone got a way around this conundrum?

 

Take off the actual bumper reinforcement it's much easier.

remove grill
remove turn signals (one screw from hole inside lower grill)
2 bolts behind each turn signal
1 phillips behind each corner light in fender well
1 bolt at the bottom with the inner fender lining

 

Thanks. That helped a bunch. much quicker than the method I used on my last accord