I picked up a decent looking trunk lid for a 1999 to throw on my 1996 but I'm having issues with getting the new (1999) latch to line up and close correctly.

The left side seems fine around the tail and the body lines seem to be okay, it feels like something is preventing it from closing all the way. The latch looks fine and seems to function correctly.

Any tips or advice? Am I missing something here?

Is it lining up right and just not latching? or is it not even lining up?

Body line on driver's side looks fine. It's almost as if the trunk lid is too long (Front to Rear) My 96 outer tails cause a gap. This causes the latch not to catch correctly, I need to take some pictures.

Maybe when I add the 97-99 outers this will fix the problem?

Look inside the trunk where it latches. There's a little thing that slides and if it moved, you wont be able to close it.

yeah, put the outers in, see waht happens.

The latches are different from those 2 models. You need to remove the latch from the old one and put in the new. One is slightly bent (like 165 degrees) and one is straight.

So if thats the case, I have a 98, but with a 95-96 trunk lid, so when I find a 97-99 trunk lid, I would just take the latch off of my current trunk and put it on the new one correct?

i swapped my 95 to 99 and didnt have to swap anything over except the key cylinder

Sounds good. Thanks