Food for thought on rebounding

[Defrost]

Ooohhh... care to share your technique? I've found this soooo awkward and challenging.

I love installing without the base, it's usually much easier! Shall we start a new thread so everyone will see it?

 

[safeinthecar]

Well first you set the car seat on vehicle seat at the desired angle. Then you put your leg inside the car against the top of the seat ( Sometimes works best with handle down, you can put it up again later) route the seatbelt through the belt path and buckle. Use your leg to push the car seat HARD toward the back of the vehicle. Pull the seatbelt tight while pushing down with your hand on the edge of the car seat nearest the buckle ( don't lock the shoulder belt yet if switchable) Once you have tightened the seat belt as much as you can, move your hand to the side of the car seat farthest from the buckle and push down here while you tighten the seatbelt some more. Wiggle seat little bit while you push down. Then if the car seat allows, you can route the shoulder belt behind the seat shell. After you route the shoulder belt behind ( or if you didn't do that at all) switch the retractor and feed all the slack in the belt into the retractor. It takes a bit of practice, and it seams complicated, especially when trying to explain it in writing, but once you get it down you can do it in less than 2 mins. I'll see if I can get my DD1 to take pictures of me doing it this weekend and make a power point of it. No promises though because we are moving. I'll get around to it eventually.

 

[Defrost]

:yeahthat:

That's exactly how I do it, too. Back in my day when we had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow, infant car seats didn't have bases! We had to reinstall them every time we put them in the car! The nice thing was, you never really needed a towel or pool noodle - you just set them in at the angle you wanted!

I was actually very suspicious of the bases when they first came out. They seemed like a needless extra step that created an additional failure point.

 

[MandiRN]

Great post SPB! :thumbsup: It was very interesting and informative to read.

 

[shashoo]

Well first you set the car seat on vehicle seat at the desired angle. Then you put your leg inside the car against the top of the seat ( Sometimes works best with handle down, you can put it up again later) route the seatbelt through the belt path and buckle. Use your leg to push the car seat HARD toward the back of the vehicle. Pull the seatbelt tight while pushing down with your hand on the edge of the car seat nearest the buckle ( don't lock the shoulder belt yet if switchable) Once you have tightened the seat belt as much as you can, move your hand to the side of the car seat farthest from the buckle and push down here while you tighten the seatbelt some more. Wiggle seat little bit while you push down. Then if the car seat allows, you can route the shoulder belt behind the seat shell. After you route the shoulder belt behind ( or if you didn't do that at all) switch the retractor and feed all the slack in the belt into the retractor. It takes a bit of practice, and it seams complicated, especially when trying to explain it in writing, but once you get it down you can do it in less than 2 mins. I'll see if I can get my DD1 to take pictures of me doing it this weekend and make a power point of it. No promises though because we are moving. I'll get around to it eventually.

Is this with the baby in the seat? I'm having trouble picturing where your leg is. Otherwise, what do you do with the baby when your installing the seat?

 

[lovemyfamily]

That is really interesting, and you have some great illustrations. I can see your point too.
Interesting to see that the seats all only rebound about the same.

 

[all together ooky]

everyone here knows that a graco snugride and an RF scenera are very easy to rotate rearward, no matter how tightly they are installed. we've had both seats, and i've been able to rotate either seat at least 10-15 degrees without even trying, with minimal force. but, our evenflo triumph never rotated easily. and now, our new signo barely budges even an inch if i try to apply force on the top of the shell to try to rotate it rearwards.

it seems to me that the difference between the seats that can almost freely rotate and the ones that are more solid is whether they have a tall base, with a tall front edge of the seating area pushed into the vehicle seat back. the scenera is base-less. there is virtually no part of the seat that compresses into the vehicle seat back. same for the snugride base. but if you look at any pictures of an RFing britax, you will see that the base is relatively tall, and above the base, the front seat edge pushes very prominently into the vehicle seat back. the taller the seat (and therefore the farther away the compression into the seat back is from the hinge point, which is essentially the attachment point, or roughly, the seat bight), the more force it will require to rotate the carseat rearward.

Whenever I have installed the Scenera the front "foot" is pressed deeply into the back of the vehicle seat. In all the cars I've installed it that front foot is never touching the bottom of the vehicle seat.

But, yeah, I have to agree with your analysis. I'm an anti-rebound fan and wish that car manufacturers would put in rear-facing tether anchors to standardize the practice. :twocents:

 

[southpawboston]

Interesting to see that the seats all only rebound about the same.

not sure what you mean? i drew all the seats rebounded to 45 degrees, simply to show that *if* they rebounded that far, they would have to push into the seat to varying amounts, depending on the design of the carseat. the idea is that some seats, and seats with rebound bars, physically can't rebound as far as others because the vehicle seat will already be fully compressed.

Whenever I have installed the Scenera the front "foot" is pressed deeply into the back of the vehicle seat. In all the cars I've installed it that front foot is never touching the bottom of the vehicle seat.

i'm not sure how seatbelt installs go, but if you install the scenera RFing with LATCH, the diagrams show the foot of the seat routed above the LATCH connectors. the foot sits pretty much right in the seat bight, on top of the lower anchors. so, any compression into the vehicle's seatback is happening at a very low point, close to the anchors, and hence close to the pivot point. exactly my point...

 

[Kalinky]

What about with a noodle? It's next to impossible to get a decent RF recline with a Scenera without a noodle.

 

[southpawboston]

not sure how a pool noodle would affect rebounding...

 

[all together ooky]

Never had a use a noodle either and I always get rock solid installs. Shoot, I wish I had a digital camera-I'd take pics. The front foot is above the LATCH connectors but it's not really near them..and it's not by the seat bight. Maybe I've been installing in abnormal vehicles.

But, I still agree with you SPB. Your posts always give me something to think about!

 

[Kalinky]

I can get a rock solid install without a noodle too, but the seat is not reclined enough for my liking - even for a 15 month old! Always looks way more upright than 30 degrees to me.

 

[Defrost]

Is this with the baby in the seat? I'm having trouble picturing where your leg is. Otherwise, what do you do with the baby when your installing the seat?

Yep, the baby is in the seat. You push on the seat from the outside of the seat in these cases, since the baby's in the way on the inside. I'm sure it's hard to picture when you've always installed seats by putting your knee or even your whole body in the seat!

So, when she said Then you put your leg inside the car against the top of the seat, she meant that your leg (generally your thigh) is against the OUTSIDE BACK of the infant seat (which is why you sometimes want to put the handle up, so you're not pushing your leg against the handle as you tighten.) If you think about where the handle is when it's in the "all the way down" position, that's where you put your leg. Then you route the seat belt, and use that leg to shove the infant seat into the seatback while you tighten the belt.