The topic of installing later seats into the early trucks comes up often on the message boards and the general consensus is that it is a fairly easy swap. One day while I was at the junkyard picking up some parts for another project I noticed that they had a couple of nice looking seats in the office. One of these seats was from a 1995 F150 XLT and was the right color to match my truck. I bought the seat and installed it a few days later. This was as easy a swap as one could hope for and the seats from any year truck up to 1996 can fit in the ’67-72 trucks.

The first thing to do is to remove the seat rails from the new seat. This is done by removing the bolt at each end of the rail with a 12 mm socket. With the rails removed from the seat frame you will see the holes where the bolts were threaded into the seat frame. Using an 11/32" drill bit, drill the threads out of these holes.

The second step is to remove the original seat from the truck. The seat rails are held to the cab floor by a pair of bolts at each end of the rail for a total of 8 bolts. Remove these bolts and (preferably with the help of a friend) remove the seat from the cab of the truck.

With the original seat out of the truck, remove the adjuster rails from the seat frame. On my 1972, the rails were held on by a 5/16" bolt each end of the rail. The bolt was welded to the rail so that it acted like a stud. The square in the center of the rail in the picture below is the head of this bolt.

Each of these bolts was fitted with a nut and washer on the inside of the seat frame. Remove these nuts with a 1/2" socket and remove the rails from the seat frame carefully. While the rails are off the seat is a good time to lube them so they will slide smoothly. I chose to spray lithium grease on the sliding surfaces of my rails.

Take the rails from the original seat and line the studs up with the holes you drilled in the new seat. Fasten the rails to the seat with a lock washer and nut as they were mounted to the original seat or with a flat washer and a nylon insert nut as I chose to do.

When you have the rails installed on the new seat it will look like the picture below.

Now enlist the help of your friend again and carefully slide the new seat into the cab of the truck. Since the original seat rails are used, the mounting holes will line up perfectly with the holes in the cab floor.

Bolt the seat to the cab floor, slide the original seat belts through the gab between the seat cushion and seat back, and you are finished.

From start to finish this swap should take less than an hour and the only tools necessary are a few sockets and a ratchet (or wrenches), and a drill with a 11/32" bit. The result is a nice looking seat that is much more comfortable than the original seat and a clean installation.