How bad are your running boards? Mine had wear thru and rust holes on top of most of the ribs so I used up a ton of welding wire closing them up. I also needed to replace the mount brackets and longitudinal reinforcement (available from Jim Carter.) It was lots of work, but I got it done, and covered up the blemishes with bedliner coating. This was before I knew that patch panels were available or I would have gone that route. It was also before a came across another frame with running boards, so I have a spare driver's side board. The passenger side on that was too far gone to be usable, but it yielded a patch that went to a fellow stovebolter.
Page 6 of my Flickr photo collection shows the restoration process of the running boards.
