Ok folks, today’s little project was to replace the jacked up panel on the back of my disgustingly dirty and rusty bench seat.

I’m sure you can get a replacement one somewhere and use the appropriate trim fasteners that were originally used, but I didn’t have any of the above… so I used what I had. I’m not sure why they chose Masonite to begin with… doesn’t seem like a good material for that.

side note, I can not find the original door fasteners anywhere, so if anyone knows where to get them, please let me know. The only ones I can find don’t work worth a cr*p.

Step 1: Remove the old back panel. Note - my fasteners literally just pulled through the old back panel instead of coming out of the seat.





I had to use wire cutters to cut the old heads off then remove the insert from the foam side.

Step 2: trace the back onto a thin piece of plywood and and mark the holes for the fastener locations. The plywood sheet I had laying around was the perfect thickness. Use a jigsaw so you can just cut the curves to match. Drill out the holes, I think I used a 1/2” or 5/8 bit.





Step 3: once cut out I sanded the edges and put a nice little bevel around the sides and top. Sanding the exposed side wouldn’t be a bad idea either if you want it smooth for painting.




i chose to paint the exposed side of mine the same color that I used for all the interior trim pieces so it would match and seal some. I couldn’t find any 1982 Ford “fawn” paint so I ended up using a satin almond, it’s close and all the trim will be the same color so… 👍🏻




Once the wood is set on then back on the seat, you can use a couple screwdrivers to put down through a couple holes to line it up while starting your fasteners. I started with the “compatible” fasteners I got… but of course they didn’t work at all because they are too stiff and don’t fit in the holes… so I went rouge and came up with a makeshift fastener system that somehow actually works.




Yes… that is a drywall insert 😂… I used a small drywall insert, a washer, and a relatively small screw. I literally put them together just like it is pictured, with the screw just 1/4 turn or so in, just enough to hold the insert on the end. Then I just put it through the hole in the plywood and down through the hole in the seat, and started to screw it down. Now it never actually got tight, but I think the seat padding grabbed the insert enough to snug the new seat back nice and firm to the back of the seat… and it passed a pull test to see if it would pop loose 🤷🏻‍♂️

let me know if you have any questions on what I did and if i missed something that made it confusing.

side picture: the base was covered in surface rust, so I took it off, disassemble the seat rails from the floor mount, and painted all exposed metal on the seat and mounts with rust reformer. I had a can of chrome-ish paint sitting around and decided to give the base a style upgrade 😂