help! told my kia cant have any child seat installed

boyse7en

molerat wrote: »

"Seat belt too long" generally refers to the seat / buckle end being too long and fouling the child seat preventing a secure fit. This is a very common problem including large volume cars such as Vectra and Astra.

I had this issue with my Alfa, the receiving part of the belt in the middle of the back seat is on a strap about 6" long. When the child seat was fitted the buckle ended up against the edge of the seat, which was not good (I think they called it 'buckle crunch')
I got a car seat (from memory, I think it is a Britax) that is raised up on two aluminum hoops (they are part of the seat's chassis, not separate) that allow the buckle to end up under the seat between the two hoops. Sorry, this is not clear from my description, but it is hard to paint the picture in less than 1000 words!

Might be best to go to an independent supplier. We went to one in out local town and had the guy there try out about 20 before we got one that worked. As they are a specialist (selling car seats and bugies only) I'd hope he knows a bit more than a halford's bike salesman about getting them to fit.

smitchy73

We had one similar where the belt was fed through the rear of the seat, you then clipped in the buckle, and there were two red like vice grips where both parts of the belt went under the clip. I used to kneel in the car seat whilst pulling and forcing down the way to get the belt really tight, before closing the red clip, I always done the one nearest the panel, then the one beside the buckle/seat belt clip. We were warned that some seats or clips when pulled to tighten too hard can cause the belt to unclip, I think it is just making sure you put the buckle in the right clip so the red release button is on the outside and away from the car seat.
We actually couldn't get isofix seats for our cars here and got one whilst on holiday in the USA, over there they call it the latch system, and was really good, plus we could strap them in with no bother at all, plus the kids loved the seats, one of them had a pull bar, with a cushioned bar for them to lean on, our wee fella used to have his juice cup or some food or even a book sitting on it.

Hope you get this sorted just for sanity, nothing worse than panicking about it. We've used the Glasgow Pram Centre and on in Kilmarnock and they were all really professional, Halford were okay but kept trying to upsell, and we weren't prepared to pay nearly £200 for a seat which done very poorly in the ratings and tests I read.