I didn't tear mine up yet, but I am undecided what to do. After a year of using the factory Nav, I'm a little over it and ready to go back to my Garmin GPS. I don't want to pay for cel data so CarPlay isn't an option for me.I popped mine off this morning. The center screw (M5-.8) is pretty deep under the cover. looks like if you did a 1 inch ball that has the 1/4-20 tapped hole, you could just drill a hole in the cover and add a black fender washer on the outside and a 1/4-20 bolt and fender washer from the inside. The 3 inch B clamp puts my GPS right above the center screen. I might see what I can do to make a part that mounts directly to the center mount to make it more rigid.
This is my previous mount. The GPS has this dock and I just fixed the mount to the dash with that 3M tape. The dock will pop onto any ball mount like that, I think it is 17mm. Very solid, but it did require a lot of wiring to get the wire into the dash. The Garmin uses a custom cable that goes from a 12v to a mini USB. It looks like there is a lot of space back there to run a cable down to the fuse panel and I can put a 12v outlet someplace. I have to locate a different ball adapter or just go ahead and stick this one to the Bronco dash. I was thinking the same as you, sandwich it to the cover.