I finally did the seat swap. OUT came the buckets, IN went the bench. No drilling, all nuts already under the body, very easy to do, and here's how (on an '03 4x4 Eddie Bauer Excursion anyway):

- the seats are held down with large Torx bolts, I had a Torx socket size T55 and it worked, but seemed a little on the sloppy side.

- to access the bolts on the front side of the seats, put the seats upright and remove the plastic "shoes" that cover the bolts. The shoes are held in place with a single plastic rivet. To remove the rivet without damaging it, I slid my finger under the shoes and seat frame and pushed up on the central rivet pin while pushing down on the top of the rivet body with the other hand. Once the little plastic rivet pin is up, grab it with pliers and lift out the rivet. The shoe slides off to the side.

- to access the bolts on the back of the seats, use the rear lever to tilt the seats forward and slide them as far forward as they go.

- the truck has nuts under the body for both seat configurations. They look like little donuts or bushings or thick washers, but don't be deceived. Have a look under your truck to find out. (Engine off, set E-brake, chock wheels, yadda yadda...)

-The passenger side seat uses the same holes for both the bucket and the split bench. If installing a bench, save this seat for last to allow easier access to the larger half of the bench.

- The driver side uses the same outer holes, but the middle holes are different. First of all, the driver side of the bench uses holes that are in the middle aisle between the two buckets, so plan to cover up those holes in the carpet somehow (more on this later). Second, the driver side bench uses two bolts to hold down the seat belt reel for the middle passenger and the seat belt clip for the driver side passenger. These two seat belt holes may need covering up as well, and certainly sealing the holes anyway, but on the bright side they are only visible when the bench is slid forward to access the back 3rd row bench.

- NO DRILLING required, through metal anyway. When under the truck I was surprized to find that I could poke up through the nuts right through the carpet and underpadding. I used a 1/4" drill to get through the underpadding and carpet while someone else held down the carpet with a large piece of wood. An awl or something to that effect would probably work fine.

- Once the new holes were marked it was an easy matter of locating the seat (or seatbelt holders) and cutting away a little bit of the carpet. I didn't actually cut away any carpet for the seat corners themselves, but only cut away the carpet for the two seat belt pieces that go in the middle of the driver-side bench.

- If installing buckets, you will only have two new holes to make through your carpet on the inside of the driver-side bucket. Carefully cut away a piece of carpet from under these seat corners to cover up the holes you will have in the centre aisle left by the bench.

- I personally wouldn't use any silicone-based adhesive to glue down the carpet as the acids in silicone would promote metal corrosion to the underbody. I have some PL Premium kicking around so I'll probably use that instead. Maybe plain old carpet tape would be better, because it would seal the hole and at the same time connect the patch with the existing carpet (if you can carefully slide it underneath the existing carpet).

- If the shoe fits...but not all fit. The inside front corner foot for the bench is a little higher than the other corners, and has a thinner shoe. The buckets all have thicker shoes. So if swapping seats with someone (hint hint) consider swapping shoes as well.

- SHIPPING: It's Expensive! These seats are heavy, and the plastic corners around the levers and such are easily damaged. I would only ship them screwed down onto a wooden platform that's slightly bigger than the seats, then build a plywood or heavy cardboard box around them. You must protect the corners from damage. The corners on the bench I bought were crushed and I need to order new plastic from Ford. Ick. Not to mention a pain-in-the-neck shipping claim. But, as long as you know the costs involved before hand, you can take that into account. When buying seats then selling your used ones, you'll probably find that shipping is all you end up paying for the seats, so maybe it's still a good deal after all.

Sorry folks that I didn't take pictures, so I gave you about a thousand words instead. Almost as good as one fuzzy picture. So in summary, there is no drilling, all the nuts are there, use a T55 Torx bit, and be nice to the plastic!