Bye bye running boards

[therangersteve]

After looking at those things for long enough I took the morning to take those things off. I must say even though I still need to do some painting it already looks a lot better to me.

 

[4rd4life]

looks good i agree. even though mine didnt come with them i never really care for those. the bar style ones dont look to bad though in some cases. are you planning to cover the holes?

 

[rabbit91]

I don't care for the running boards, although they do stop alot of crap from getting kicked up on the truck.

What's with the different rims ?

 

[therangersteve]

I'll be filling the holes, haven't decided to go with plugs or tape. I'm going to be putting bedliner on the tan areas later too.

I have a set of each rim, picked up the ones on the front with the tires used to replace a bad pair, had all four and got a flat, the two on the back were the two that were good out of the old set. I just never got around to changing the rubber to the matching set of rims. I don't know anyone in a tire shop here to work a deal and hadn't looked into paying whatever the going rate would be. Planning on getting new rubber this fall and painting the rims black, trying to decide which ones I like more.

 

[rabbit91]

I hate the look of the front rims but I think them in black would look good.

 

[4rd4life]

i like the looks of the rear rims... can you fit the stock center caps on the rear wheels? if so black rims with the stock caps would look good imo.

 

[obie]

Explorers look much better without 'em. Though with Eddie Bauer's, it looks a bit goofy to have the flares just abruptly end. Are you gonna be pulling those off too? If not, you could always get creative with some fiberglass and fab up something to blend it into the rest of the body.

 

[therangersteve]

I don't mind the look of the flares, thought about trying to fab up something to bring them back into the body, altough with the bottom already painted it doesn't look as goofy already.
I like the back set too, I don't have any centers for them, but with them blacked out I don't think it would be as big of an issue, I'm sure I could always track down a set to fill the middle off of something in a yard somewhere.

 

[shadowless127]

Explorers look much better without 'em. Though with Eddie Bauer's, it looks a bit goofy to have the flares just abruptly end.

I agree. This is why I left my running boards on. Especially since the 99-01's don't have any of that extra gold cladding on the doors, it would look odd with the gold rear bumper, fender flares, nothing, then fender flares, then gold front bumper. The gold running boards kind of bring it together.

 

[obie]

That actually does look a lot better with the paint. Although... I wonder if the plastic moulding that models without running boards have would work? I know they would probably need to be glassed where the flares meet the moulding, but I think it would tie it all together. Maybe I should just go out to my garage and take a picture of what I'm talking about.

 

[obie]

These are what I'm talking about.You could either keep them black, or paint your whole fender flares/rocker moulding/quarter trims a different color.

 

[therangersteve]

I really want to paint everything that it on it that's tan right now flat black. Doors, flares, and the parts on both bumpers. I would prefer to have a 99-00 Front bumper instead of what I have now. And I'm tossing around the idea of changing out the tailgate and rear bumper too at some point.

 

[Sams01XplrSprt]

lookin good

 

[derek_redneck91]

Man. I just spent 40 hours doing exactly that. I took ALL the plastic off of mine, and had to completely replace the passenger side rocker panel and dog leg (which they dont make for the sport so we had to fab it ourselves. I will throw up a thread about it in the body work section of explorerforum so you can see my journey. Unfortunately the pictures of how bad the rocker panel was are gone. It is very much so worth it to completely re-do the body work.

 

[OffTrac]

JMO, but I think the flares w/o the running boards looks good as is.

 

[01STrunner]

JMO, but I think the flares w/o the running boards looks good as is.

Agreed. Especially if you're thinking about going with bigger tires in the future. They'll act as nice fender flares.

 

[therangersteve]

I am going to go with 31s shortly. That's what I'll be picking up this fall. Going to get the couple inches of lift from the TT and War153s. Thnking that I'll black it out at the body line there just above the door moldings, havne't decided if I'm going to keep them or not when I paint.