New member looking at first purchase

I have a "back story" on the angle iron welded to the rear uprights that can be seen in the first few posts in this thread.

I had a chance to talk to the builder of this car today, he said that when he got it there was a trailer hitch attached to the rear of the car the angle iron was there to attach the safety chains. He said he just never took them off.
I plan on removing them and cleaning the area up.

aaahh .. a trailer hitch on a Pantera .. gotta be a story there. :-)

There have been a few- Navy pilot Ellis Woumnm had one installed while he was in the Phillipines, and racer Bob Bensen's PO used his to tow a formula car to autocrosses. The trailers are always pretty small. It seems easier to do on early Panteras with the single-point ZF rear mount.

Not to mention the Pantera with matching trailer that belongs to "fordgt" - Gary #6984.

Had some time to work on the pantera today, had to fight 2 frozen seat mounting bolts, 1 on each seat, still have yet to remove the passenger one.

Wanted to look over the front of the engine, and remove the 4 point harnesses to make room to reinstall factory style belts.

Found some rust in the drivers rocker, but really not as bad as I thought I'd find..

Here's the rust as viewed from the belt mount hole.