[bobbader]

It could be a lot of small issues adding up to your dilemma. The car may have been in an accident at some point in time and the brackets are inboard of where they should be. Maybe you can figure a way to measure the distance from the outer hole of the brackets to the chassis rail and compare those measurements on the other side of the car. This will take some time but might tell you if the brackets are bent down and inboard. As mentioned by others, the front of the car to back of the car orientation of the brackets can be remedied with a pipe and some elbow grease. OR ........ you can remove the running board to fender bolts, get everything lined up between the boards and brackets so you can fasten the running boards to the brackets, leave everything loose and see if the fenders can then be re-bolted to the boards (all bolts and nuts tightened a little at a time) without putting stress on or bending anything out of shape. A big mistake many folks make in putting a car together is to bolt one item down tight and then try to bolt everything else to it. In the case of sheet metal, this allows for no flexibility in how the pieces ultimately fall into place with each other. If nothing else, this latter procedure might confirm that the running board brackets are indeed the culprit and will need further attention.

Good luck. Bob Bader