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Recently I was out of town for work and my wife did the unthinkable. You think you know somebody and can trust them, but no... I'm getting all choked up just thinking about it. She went to IKEA and filled up the car with cheap furniture. Once the trunk was full, she filled the back seat. And in the process, she knocked the trim panel loose on the back of the driver's seat. Six clips secure the panel and most of them broke.
The panel (#6) is secured by four "fir tree" clips (#8) at the corners and two hook-style clips (#7) in the middle.
The two clips in the middle are part number XR811060 and I found them on eBay:
The four clips in the corner are part number XR823622 and were out of stock everywhere I checked. I'm sure I could have found a set in some distant corner of the internet, but I got to wondering about an alternate (read: affordable) version. Oy vey! There are several bazillion styles of "fir tree" clips out there, but nothing close enough to work. I ended up making a simple modification to some generic clips. Here is what I purchased from good old Amazon:
This image shows the original clip (black) next to the modified clip. Note the shoulder on the original clip. To duplicate that, I slipped a short piece of 3/8" fuel line over the clip. Voila! I've now got a fully workable replacement at a fraction of the cost for an unobtainable Jaguar part:
Here's my version about to be installed on the panel. This clip didn't snap into the slot quite as tightly as the original, so I added a dab of hot melt glue to hold everything together during assembly. Once fully installed on the seat back, everything stayed in place securely:
This is depressing: it will never be the same as you will always know, and the devil on your shoulder will remind you to get the real things, even if you get from alibaba.
"Recently I was out of town for work and my wife did the unthinkable. You think you know somebody and can trust them, but no... I'm getting all choked up just thinking about it. She went to IKEA and filled up the car with cheap furniture. Once the trunk was full, she filled the back seat. And in the process, she knocked the trim panel loose on the back of the driver's seat. Six clips secure the panel and most of them broke."
Seatback Trim Panel Clips
