VoodooChile
New member
(The Walking Disaster would be me).
My mom, my sister, and I am taking all 3 kids (my 2--dd, 5.5, and ds, 2, plus dn, 3) on an outing tomorrow), so we're all going in my Pilot, so we can all go in one car. I NEVER use my third row (seriously, it's been used once, and not with car seats), so when I went to rearrange car seats this morning, well, it might have been funny to a casual observer...
1.Dd's seat is a Frontier80 (booster)--2nd row, passenger outboard. Not moving. No problems there.
2.Ds's normal seat is a classic Marathon, rf, 2nd row, driver's side outboard. We'd thought that dn could sit there ff (she's over the weight limit to rf in any of the seats we have). I haven't installed a ff MA in years, and the back part of the base is way off the vehicle seat if I want the back of the MA to stay in contact with the seat back (I did change the base recline). My dd had a serious thing about being reclined while ff, so I've always tried to install ff seats as upright as possible--am I just trying to make it *too* upright? B/c with the whole base on the vehicle seat, it would definitely be in dd's "tantrum zone", recline-wise.
3. The third seat is an ETA, which I've tried to put in the third row. I obviously prefer ds to be rf but the seat doesn't seem to fit, front-to-back. There doesn't seem to be LATCH back there. I tend to favor seat belt installs, since I have arthritis (probably RA), which attacks my hands/fingers terribly (they feel fantastic after this morning!) and digging at those LATCH hooks is less than ideal in most cases--so I don't look for LATCH right off the bat. Anyway, The belts are the kind that come from the ceiling of the car, snap into a smaller buckle, then go across (I'm sure there's a term for them, I just don't have my car manual handy). So I tried to install the ETA with one (passenger outboard)--no dice. I could NOT get it to work--the outside (away from the buckle) would lift a good 5 inches even after I locked the belt (I could hear it ratchet), and I tried a locking clip instead of locking the belt too. I'm not sure what else to do. My hands have about had it for the day, and the local tech is the one who insisted all rf seats MUST be at a 45-degree angle (dd LOVED that), that all rf seats needed the harness in the bottom slots only, and used a locking clip on my Marathon...
My mom, my sister, and I am taking all 3 kids (my 2--dd, 5.5, and ds, 2, plus dn, 3) on an outing tomorrow), so we're all going in my Pilot, so we can all go in one car. I NEVER use my third row (seriously, it's been used once, and not with car seats), so when I went to rearrange car seats this morning, well, it might have been funny to a casual observer...
1.Dd's seat is a Frontier80 (booster)--2nd row, passenger outboard. Not moving. No problems there.
2.Ds's normal seat is a classic Marathon, rf, 2nd row, driver's side outboard. We'd thought that dn could sit there ff (she's over the weight limit to rf in any of the seats we have). I haven't installed a ff MA in years, and the back part of the base is way off the vehicle seat if I want the back of the MA to stay in contact with the seat back (I did change the base recline). My dd had a serious thing about being reclined while ff, so I've always tried to install ff seats as upright as possible--am I just trying to make it *too* upright? B/c with the whole base on the vehicle seat, it would definitely be in dd's "tantrum zone", recline-wise.
3. The third seat is an ETA, which I've tried to put in the third row. I obviously prefer ds to be rf but the seat doesn't seem to fit, front-to-back. There doesn't seem to be LATCH back there. I tend to favor seat belt installs, since I have arthritis (probably RA), which attacks my hands/fingers terribly (they feel fantastic after this morning!) and digging at those LATCH hooks is less than ideal in most cases--so I don't look for LATCH right off the bat. Anyway, The belts are the kind that come from the ceiling of the car, snap into a smaller buckle, then go across (I'm sure there's a term for them, I just don't have my car manual handy). So I tried to install the ETA with one (passenger outboard)--no dice. I could NOT get it to work--the outside (away from the buckle) would lift a good 5 inches even after I locked the belt (I could hear it ratchet), and I tried a locking clip instead of locking the belt too. I'm not sure what else to do. My hands have about had it for the day, and the local tech is the one who insisted all rf seats MUST be at a 45-degree angle (dd LOVED that), that all rf seats needed the harness in the bottom slots only, and used a locking clip on my Marathon...
