I'm currently in the middle of this problem. Yea patcher64 is only NTSC and freethewads changes the region but no effect to the video output.
If you have found a way to force NTSC video output in the usb loader for a WAD then you're a step ahead...
You're right, but I find pal wads to be sluggish and ugly :-)
I tried Freethewads and it does convert the regions, but it does not change the videomode to 60hz. Booting the converted wad gives a black screen because vWii tries to output 60hz...