Prevoius owners left the 78 to be towed by my tow company. Stripped but the body and interior. The left me with no front end protection but the padding for the lights (nothing in middle). The end of my rails has nothing on it. I have the nose clip.
I understand the brackets and the bumper but is there a real purpose to the spring plate and spring crossmember that goes behind the triangle? I'm asking because I found the bumper on ebay for $20, but the spring stuff and the foam is hard to find or over $200.
I have an idea for the foam. I'm guessing the bumper was removed for weight and air flow through lower grille. I found a custom that plasma cut a hole in the bumper to match lower grille. I was thinking about doing it but I forgot about the rectangular holes on the bottom of the nose. Is that suffecient enough for airflow to the cooling system? Would I need the chin like air deflector/spoiler?
Not quite restoring, rather fixing her up to be a daily driver with the occasional weekend drive.

 

The foam holds the shape for sure. I pulled mine the other day. Maybe fiberglassing some round tubing to the back to help hold its shape? I'm not sure what triangle your talking about. I'm trying to remember if the bottom grill even lines up with the rad. I know the lower grill doesn't have any holes in it to allow airflow anyhow. The nose doesn't have a hole either.

So I guess an answer would be, leave it. The hole with help with weight, the do weigh a ton. I have one in the rafters of my garage, lol. I never saw a Camaro over heat because it didn't have enough air through the top grill.

 

By triangle, I mean the point in the middle of the bumper (versus a straight peice of steel. What about the spring plate and crossmember. I know its for impact absorbtion but what it took a staight peice and stetched it acoss to the stud plates?

 

I think the nose would cave in going down the road.

 

I agree with nomad if your missing support the old fiberglass is already weak from years of sun/cold.. it will probably start to cave. im sure you can foam it up and do some work to build it up so you dont have that problem. Even todays cars have high impact foam out of a can! lol