Car seat for extended cab truck

I have a question about the best seat/placement of seat in an F-250 extended cab truck. We registered for an infant seat for my car(a Taurus), one Century Accel for the truck since it is rear facing till 30 lbs and another Accel for my car after the infant seat is outgrown. We just received one of the Accel's and put it into the truck just to see how it would fit. The rear seat of the truck is a little narrow but it looks like it might be ok once secured in the rear facing position, not sure about that yet though. Forward facing though I think the seat back is too straight and the car seat hits the rear window. Is there another seat that would work better in the truck or will we have to use it in the front seat? There is a passenger airbag but it has an on/off switch. The only time we will probably use the truck is for longer trips when we take the dog with us as well. Is it ok to use that seat forward facing in the front? It would also mean me being stuck in the back which isn't all that comfortable for long trips. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sandra

Yes, there are seats that have a more upright angle. There is no posted comparison data on this, but I was looking at several combo seats at Target the other day, and noticing that several are far more upright than others. Usually this is a drawback, because it makes it more difficult for a child to sleep in the seat. In this case, however, it may give you a better fit. Try the Century Ascend. It is possible that some of the converitibles would also be more upright. I'd recommend taking your truck down to a local baby store, like Babies R Us, and trying several seats to see what fits best.

My second comment is about your truck. I just read a summary of a new report about extended cabs in pickup trucks. It found that the extended cab of small pickups, defined as less than 4,500 pounds gross vehicle weight, and having a very confined backseat space, with jump seat or miniture bench seats, had very poor crash protection. Full sized cabs, with somewhat deeper bench seats in back and a rather thin seat back, scored similar to small passenger vehicles. Crew cabs are those with similar rear space to a compact 4 dr SUV, and provided the best protection. So if you have the first kind of ext cab, I would suggest that you not put your child in back at all, and probably try not to use this vehicle for your child. If you have the second kind, just stick with the backseat if you can. Of course, it is always better to put a child in a spot with a good fit than bad, assuming that there is no airbag and rear facing child seat.

Thank you so much from your input. I am pretty sure we have the second kind of truck you were talking about since it is a SuperDuty truck and does have 4 doors (just not the full size doors of a crew cab).

The Ascend looks like a good choice and we will consider it, I just don't know if it will replace the second Accel since we will have a gap from 20-30 lbs without a second car seat. We'll see.

The only other question I have is if you think the Accel will work rear facing in the back seat even though the truck seat is a little narrow? The seat looks like it will be secure once it is actually installed but it doesn't fit completely on the seat.

Thanks again for your help.

Sandra

Eighty (80)% of the base of the carseat must be on the vehicle seat. So not all of it.

If you have 4 doors, then I'd agree that you don't have the kind of pickup this report worried about.

You are correct that if you only keep one Accel that you'll only have one seat, which will have to be moved back and forth, until your son turns forward facing at 18-24 months. So you might want to go down to the store and look for a convertible that is more upright.