New Member with a '70 CST and a few body questions

[Yaboyolin]

Hi all! I've been lurking on this site for a few days now but and figured I should introduce myself.

I just started a tear down of a 1970 Chevy CST/10 with a 350 sbc and 400 trans. It's originally from Virginia, where my uncle purchased it. It sat in fields being "restored" by my uncles friends for years. In reality they were just robbing the good parts off the truck before my uncle finally went and got it and gave it to my little brother. He had big plans for it but was then given a 1986 GMC and he fell out of love with the truck, and in love with square bodies. So it sat for a few more years. Fast forward to now, I moved back to Texas from Vermont to be with my mom as she battles cancer and I attend college, and I decided I'd take the truck project over. It supposedly ran 6 years ago, and we know it has a rebuilt engine, my uncle thinks it was bored out and whatnot.

As you can see in the pictures, it's fairly stripped. I took the bed off to asses some rust issues with it. My overall goal is to get it running strong and cheaply fix the rest of the issues. It's going to be ugly, but that's ok with me, I've never had anything that was newer than 16 years old to me. I've always been an MGB guy, I've had three in the past 5 years, learning to tear them apart at age 13. Old 70s jap bikes have also been the center of my attention for the past few years, so having something with more than for cylinders is going to be a transition for me.

I do have a question to start with, and that's just how structural are the rockers on this truck? Dealing with MGBs my entire life, the rockers were an integral part of the unibody construction, but considering this is a frame on truck, I wasn't sure if they were really all that important? The reason I ask is because mine need to be repaired. They aren't completely rotted away, but there are some holes. Like I said, this is going to be an ugly truck. To patch the few hole in the floorboards I'm going to be using license plates pop riveted on. I'll obviously treat all the metal first. But I was thinking that it would look cool to do this with the rockers as well. I can weld, and I do have to repair the cab supports, so if the rockers are super important I can fix those correctly as well. But I was just curious.

Sorry for the long post. I do appreciate any feedback now and in the future!