baby seats and buckle length

[campergeek]

Just fitted a rear-facing baby seat with base, and found that because the buckle on the middle bench seat is quite long (sticks out of the seat maybe 5"), the buckle itself is in contact with the seat. Most things I've read say that only the belt should be in contact with a car seat. Here's what it says on Which?...

Buckle crunch

Positioning the car’s seatbelt buckle hard up against the child seat frame can cause the buckle to fail under crash conditions.

Only the seat belt webbing should be in contact with the frame of the child car seat. If the buckle of the adult belt lies across the frame of the child seat, pressure on the buckle (in an accident, or even under sharp braking) could cause the buckle to fail. If it fails, the buckle is likely to open, allowing your baby or child to be projected out of the seat, completely unrestrained.

So wondering what other owners have done about this, as it's probably an issue with all child seats fitted to a Bongo? I could wrap the belt attached to the buckle around one of the bars under the seat to effectively shorten it, but this might cause other issues. Ideally I'd replace the buckle with a shorter one, maybe from another mazda, though don't know what would be suitable. The 626 or 323 one's look about the right length, but not sure if the buckle will fit the male clip on the belt. Anyone done this?

Cheers,
Alex

[missfixit70]

This come up loads, search on "buckle and crunch" brings up this lot to be going on with until other answers come along -
http://www.igmaynard.co.uk/bongo/forum/ ... mit=Search

[campergeek]

Thanks - yep, should have searched first

Consensus seems to be either wrap it around the bar underneath (which I do have some reservations about but will go with for now) or get them professionally shortened, which I imagine isn't cheap.

[sdsk]

We came across this problem when we bought our Bongo too, although this was for a forward facing seat (from 9 months).

The only child seat we could find to avoid this issue seemed to be from the German company Kiddy:

http://www.kiddy.de/en/childrens-car-seats.html

The seat belt wraps around the child instead of the seat, using their "impact shield".
There are some pictures of ours fitted in the bongo in the child seat fact sheet, in the members area:

http://www.igmaynard.co.uk/bongo/member ... dseats.pdf

I hope that helps.

Darron

[walty666]

Discussed this at length with a guy called Dominic at Britax (one of their main technical guys who goes around the country training the likes of Mothercare in installation know-how) and he said wrapping around the seat chassis is the best bet. If you can actually pass the buckle socket back through one of the loops it's better, basically creating a half-hitch with the webbing so it's self-locking under tension. He was familiar with Bongos and had been consulted on the issue previously.

[LeeW]

Had the same problem too! Mothercare condemed our seats saying they were unsuitable for the van. The Britax First Class seat seams to be the only one that fits as its the most adaptable. the belt is routed differently to get around the long seat belt problem.

PS these are forward facing seats, not sure about rear facing ones but good luck

Lee

[dom_e]

We've used a Britax First Class Plus, which can be rear and forward facing. This gets around the buckle crunch issue with an alternative routing. This was fitted in the rear most flip up seats.

We currently use a class 0 Mothercare carrier in the rear most flip up seats, which seems to be fine. It's probably not one you can buy anymore (it's about third hand now).

A Graco Nautilus also fits well in the front seat.