Convertible car seat installation: Tricks of the trade

Our technicians learned key things that may help make your car seat installation easier.

For rear-facing installations, a secure fit is easier to achieve with LATCH than with a seatbelt. Rear-facing installations—with a 3-point belt—may cause the seat to tilt to one side (below, left), as the "shoulder" portion of the belt tries to pull upward on the seat. LATCH can avoid this (below, middle). If your car doesn't have LATCH, you can install the seat using a locking clip (below, right), leaving the belt in "unlocked" mode to keep the seat in place.

  

When tightening LATCH straps, you'll be more successful if you pull in the direction the LATCH strap was laying. Often this means pulling the LATCH strap through the belt path hole (below, right) rather than outside it (below, left).

 

Seats with a wider base may be more difficult to install rear-facing. Some models allow you to remove the base (below, right), which may make the installation easier and takes up less room. Our tests found however that seats with wider bases (below, left) were easier to install forward-facing.

 

Seats with lower child-weight limits (40 lbs. or less) may fit better in a small car or third-row position (below, right) than higher-weight-limit models (below, left), but won't be usable for as long.

 

Some car seat owners' manuals may caution against installing the seat with seatbelts if a vehicle's buckles or seatbelt anchors are positioned away from the car's seatback (see photos, below), but this positioning is common, even in newer vehicles. A LATCH installation is the solution, but if your car doesn't have LATCH, you may need to consider a different seat position.

 

It's best not to re-use a seat that has been involved in a crash. After our tests, those models that were not visibly cracked were still potentially compromised: plastics were visibly stressed, internal structures and bars were bent or changed position, and parts such as tensioners and adjusters—those that help make a taut, secure fit—became pinched or difficult to use.

Child seat installation is confusing and difficult. Make use of local child-seat fitting stations and clinics. Go to http://www.seatcheck.org/ or NHTSA's site to find those available in your area.