? regarding seat belt buckle & carseat base

[94bruin]

Okay carseat experts (ie Julie :)), I have another question.

The base of my Latchloc is slightly wider than the width of the middle seat. This means that the buckle for the side seat belt is underneath the base. Furthermore, when the tech installed the base, the buckle is facing the wrong way, preventing access to it. (The buckle is maybe an inch in from the side of the base.) So instead of loosing one seat in the back, we've lost two seats in the back!

My question is if we tried to re-install the base (which I would NOT look forward to since the tech struggled a lot with it) so that we can access this buried buckle, does its location compromise the safety of the seat in any way? This wouldn't really be a problem, except that with my parents coming to town soon, we need to have that extra seatbelt available (since they can't drive our other car, which is manual shift.)

Thanks for any info you can provide! I've thrown in the two receiving blankets in the car already, so we're good to go with preventing side head roll action!

[hipmaman]

The situation is not ideal, but can you check the car manual to make sure that you can put a carseat in the middle back seat as you have. I assume the tech had checked it but just double check to be sure...

As for the buckle facing down/in, it might be just accidental that the tech had the buckle faced inward. But with reading the struggle to install your carseat, I think it might be because there was problem fitting the carseat and the tech might have to employ one of the tricks which is 'twisting' the stem of the female part of the seatbelt. This is often done to shorten the stem and hence better fitting of the seatbelt system and carseat.

You can try re-install, but if there was an issue of compatibility, you might not achieve best fit with 'normal' installation.

[94bruin]

Hmm, thanks for the heads up regarding middle seat compatiblity. I'll check the manual later. I think I'll leave the seatbelt as it is for now, until I can get it rechecked.