Its a lot to change, that's for sure, especially if you want to do it so its correct. Even just to do the grille is expensive and time consuming, with a lot more parts than you might think (I thought it would be easy too!). You can get away with not doing the complete fenders, but you'll still need the headlight buckets and assembly off of a 70 or 71. You also need a new header panel, latch/upright, the grille itself, headlight bezels, hood trim, etc. The grille itself is pretty pricey if its in good condition, and the headlight bucket assemblies have to be spot welded in. You can buy inserts for the marker lights and weld them in, or look for scrap pieces to do the conversion also.
I've been gathering all the parts to convert the front end of my '72 to a '70 or '71. Just like the look of those grilles better. Strangely enough I like the tail lights on the '72-4 better, and I have no plans to change the interior since I really don't care if it doesn't look like a correct 70/71. I just want it to look like I want it to, and since I'm starting with a non-rallye, non numbers matching, 318/auto I'm not too worried about it. I also plan on keeping the '72 stuff if I want to change it back. But I'm still collecting parts, and so far it hasn't been cheap!
Why not buy a 70 or 71? For me at least it seems that the '72-4 cars are quite a bit cheaper to start with, although I'm not sure it would end up being a savings to convert it over, especially to be 100% correct. Unless of course you already had to replace those parts. My fenders already need work in the front (rust), and my grille isn't in very good shape either. So that may offset some of it.
It won't be worth anything more unless you go the whole way though, and maybe not even then. It will probably be worth less as a partial conversion, since it won't be a correct '74 either...
