New car seat for the kid

[TYLER R]

So my son is almost outgrown the crap box car seat my parents got him (he would of been better off riding in a milk crate bunjee corded to the roof rack I thought...) and we are looking at getting a new one.

What are some that you guys run in your 99 (or same gen.) Outbacks?

Also... Do you guys run it in the center with the crappy lap belt or do you move it out to one of the outside seatbelts?

 

Right now we run the Britax Marathon g3 in my Toyota Corolla with out any problems. it does take away from a bit of leg room up front, but I can live with it.

I really dont remember if we had ever tried that in my wifes car before it went into the shop or not. I think we did, but it took away from the leg room a lot if I remember right.

 

I am searching as we speak to get more info on this, but my computer blocks the search results out after I search once, so it is taking me a while... I hate work computers....

 

[fishy]

I don't know which seats are available in your market or anything but I recently retired a 99 legacy wagon from daily driving and had my son's carseat in that for a while.

 

Initially in the 'bucket' seat he had as an infant we had it in the centre position but when we changed seats to the next size up I found that the plastic seatbelt pocket things at the base of the seatback interfered with the base of the carseat and made it hard to get the seat installed correctly.
 

I moved his seat to the passenger's side and had much better luck with installations*.

The other carseat thought I wanted to add was: if you haven't already turned him around to front-facing please consider extended rear facing. Here in my part of Canadistan the law says I could have turned my little guy around at 1 year but the longer they rear-face the better basically. He outgrew rear-facing in the seat I have in my 05 Outback (the Latch system for car seats was almost worth buying the car for alone!) so he is forward facing in my car now but the seat we have in the Wifemobile is rated differently and he is still rear-facing in that car. He's over 3 years old now.

 

 

* I don't think you can correctly install a child seat in a smallish car unless you get at least one pulled muscle during the process. A hernia means you've done a really good job!

(sorry for being long winded and not particularly helpful)

[TYLER R]

LOL!! I like that post! Dont worry about it, and you were helpful in letting me know that I am not the only one who is having problems getting it to 'sit' right in the middle spot.

He is still rear facing (almost 6 months), but the seat in her car is one of the infant/early todler and he is too long for it already.

Yeah, we will keep him rear facing for a while I am sure.

I agree about pulling a muscle getting those damn things in!! To get it hooked up in my car (08 toyota corolla),I have to get on the ground on the outside to pull everything tight. But the good thing is, once it is in, it is rock solid! It doesnt move! The one in Lindas car is within the movement limitation, but I dont like the fact that it does have a bit of a wobble to it. 

The Britax we have is one that is rated for them to use up to a booster seat, so we will proly get another one of those for her car since it will last him a while.

Kinda crazy, but I remember when I was a kid in a car seat, I would remember falling over going around some of the freeway on ramps. It wasnt cause my dad was driving fast, they always owned pos cars, but I just dont think the seats were that good back in the early 80's....

[idosubaru]

center position is safer so i lean towards that.  you have anchor points installed for the top strap?

 

installing car seats is annoying.  last two Subaru's i bought i made sure they had the new LATCH systems. since i have a fleet of Subarus i've installed seats in quite a few varieties. for the earlier models I just basically jam one knee into the car seat to compress it back into the vehicle seat as i fasten the seat belts.  

 

the center position is annoying because the lapbelt is at the proper adjusted length right when the end latch mechanism is at the turning point after coming through the seat and needing to go down...but the metal latch itself isn't flexible like the belt obviously so it ends up at an odd place often times.  it would be helpful if the receiving end were shorter so the latching piece could come out further.

 

aggressively plowing my knee into the seat is the only way to get it installed tightly in non-Latch Subaru's. once you get it adjusted as tight as you can - i jam one knee into the car seat and put my weight into it to compress the child seat into the vehicle seat, then click it in under compression.  my wife essentially can't do it, or not get it nearly as tight because she's much smaller than i am obviously.

 

if i were comparing car seats i'd take the top 3 i'm looking at and buy the smallest one width wise.  we have two children and the one car seat...is really nice...but it's like a lazyboy in the back and takes up way too much room.  if it were a little less wide we could fit a third person (small) in the back which would be convenient for us. 

 

i'm only 5' 10" tall so while I do need to have the seat more forward than i usually have it, it's not that big of a deal.

 

car seats are annoying.  i think some places, like baby's r us will let you take some floor displays out to the car to test fit if you want, might want to call or google and see if you can find a place that does that.

[spazomatic]

In our baja, we mounted the boys carseat on the passenger side, with the latch system. It does rob a bit of room from the passenger front...but my wife's short so its okay. If you have any doubts about the best way to mount what you have, you can go to any fire department and theyll help you out and give advice if you need it.