The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Running board rust repair

Anyone ever repaired rust through on the ribbed running boards, or is it pretty much a no go? If you did how is the best way to do this and try to keep the look as close as possible.

Any metal part can be repaired. The "how" depends on pictures we see. Obviously you have to take them off to the bench/welding table.
There is a patch panel available for the ribbed areas. $35
Also available are, running board braces, brackets, safety tread, reinforcement bracket, step plate toe kick, seals, plugs..

Donors and NOS.

You have been busy lately posting everywhere looks like you are thawing out up there.

I don't know what your access to junkyards is. I guess they are automotive salvage yards now. Here in rural Northern Indiana they are still junkyards. There are many small yards around here that have these trucks rusting away. I'm widening my fenders and running boards 2". I got a set of OEM running boards that the brackets were rusted bad enough that you didn't need a wrench just a yank to get them off and the edges were banged in but the main tread was fine for the most part. He wanted $10 for the pair. I gave him $20. He's just a good old boy making a living. He lives on the property with a pack of various hounds that run the yard. All kinds of hounds from Coon Hounds to Blood Hounds to Basset Hounds that he bought from me. He doesn't have a theft problem. It's like something out of the movies. There is at least 6 such places within 30 minutes of me and they all know who has what and will send you their way. No internet required. As cool as that is $35 and the click of the mouse doesn't sound that bad. Has anyone used them here? do they match? What is the gauge? I saw a you tube video of a guy body working some AD running boards that he said were OEM. I measured mine with a cheep gauge card at 14 gauge. Maybe someone here knows? I'm thinking this guy must be Thor the way he moved the metal. After contacting him he said his were 16 gauge. Sorry to ramble but these might be some things to check.

Jim Carter offers repair panels to fix the rusted out sections. Here is a picture of the panel and a link.

Check out carter auto restyling on y tube he made some repairs to running boards .He is from Saskatchewan also . In his video he uses parts from different running boards and you could see that even the origional boards had changed over the years due to the dies from the stamping wearing out.This guy is a good metal worker and he brings back a lot of parts that no one would attempt.

Thanks all for the info and advice, I'll be sure to check out all the suggestions.

My running boards were pretty rusty and thin on the tops of the ribs. What I did is weld the gaps up. Probably not the best approach, but it worked. I burnt up a lot of welding wire and lots of electrons grinding the welds. I also built a press of sorts to straighten the ribbed sections. I also replaced the support brackets underneath. Here's some pictures.

And here's the link to the youtube video that Kevinski mentioned. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISGs6eZ8xuI

That looks like a very good repair to me.

I used my little bead roller to reproduce the ribbed pattern, don't have any photos handy but it cleaned up. As long as the sections are small it's doable with some patience.

I know a guy who had some pretty rough running boards with some rust through areas and some deep pitting. He sand blasted then, welded patches in. He then hand-carved a Body filler squeegee to match the contour of the ribs so that he could fill in all of the imperfections and pits without creating a big mess that couldn't be sanded accurately or smooth.
His trucks name is Ned.

I cheated a little bit on my running boards by finishing them with bedliner material. The texture hides some minor imperfections in the repairs. That way I didn't have to get that anal about the metal work. But there's no filler on my running boards.