HayleyCPST
New member
So...today I was doing a check for a family I work for and they have a BLVD for their son. The parents decided to turn him back RF. :thumbsup: (and without convincing I swear-the mom asked me!)
The recline mechanism is broken. Like 2 of my other BLVD's and I'm sure lots of yours too. This seems to be a very common problem. It will not lock in the FF mode for the life of me. I know it's supposed to be in RF mode, I was just checking. I turned it upside-down, I tried rotating the base...etc. WILL NOT LOCK!
So, we got the dad to unscrew the base to see what was going on in there and I found something very very interesting. The mechanism that locks it into the FF mode extends over the base so that when the white plastic thing is on (which we took off) it pushes the black piece so it won't lock. It will ONLY lock in RF mode. Here are some pictures.
This one is just showing what I'm talking about. The black piece on the inside has 2 notches for RF and FF mode.
See what I mean? The black part extends over the base so it cannot lock in FF mode.
Does anyone think this is recall worthy? I'm going to call Britax on Monday but I'm wondering if I should also notify NHTSA. I'm sure tons of parents are having this problem but they don't know it happening. I'm concerned because you cannot use the car seat FF in recline mode after 33lbs. That's essentially half of the car seat that you bought thrown out the window. Well, at least to people who know about this problem.
By no means am I saying that everyone should go unscrew their BLVD, but I wanted to share what I found out and how this could possibly be a reason why it's not locking. This seat was used RF but was not tethered, so the theory of over-tightening does not apply to this scenario.
The recline mechanism is broken. Like 2 of my other BLVD's and I'm sure lots of yours too. This seems to be a very common problem. It will not lock in the FF mode for the life of me. I know it's supposed to be in RF mode, I was just checking. I turned it upside-down, I tried rotating the base...etc. WILL NOT LOCK!
So, we got the dad to unscrew the base to see what was going on in there and I found something very very interesting. The mechanism that locks it into the FF mode extends over the base so that when the white plastic thing is on (which we took off) it pushes the black piece so it won't lock. It will ONLY lock in RF mode. Here are some pictures.
This one is just showing what I'm talking about. The black piece on the inside has 2 notches for RF and FF mode.
See what I mean? The black part extends over the base so it cannot lock in FF mode.
Does anyone think this is recall worthy? I'm going to call Britax on Monday but I'm wondering if I should also notify NHTSA. I'm sure tons of parents are having this problem but they don't know it happening. I'm concerned because you cannot use the car seat FF in recline mode after 33lbs. That's essentially half of the car seat that you bought thrown out the window. Well, at least to people who know about this problem.
By no means am I saying that everyone should go unscrew their BLVD, but I wanted to share what I found out and how this could possibly be a reason why it's not locking. This seat was used RF but was not tethered, so the theory of over-tightening does not apply to this scenario.