Hey guys,
I just got a great deal on a convertible carseat (Graco 4ever) and was just trying to install it in my older 1993 Camry. I can't, for the life of me, get the thing to fit snug against the center OR sides in the back. The seats are leather (and slippery), so I'm sure that doesn't help. The center seatbelt is just a lapbelt that is manual adjust so there's no locking or shoulder harness. The side seats have locking shoulder-belts but I just couldn't get the seat in there snug enough. Is it really supposed to be this hard? I was working up a sweat... same thing happened when I tried to install the Graco Snugride in our Rav4 - had no idea how to do it right so had someone at the police dept show us. And even after that I still have no idea what to do. Is my Camry just too old to support these new car seats? How can I get it in tighter? The officer at the PD showed us a trick where you twist the seat belt receiver several times to make a tighter connection - I tried that but it didn't work in the Camry.
On a side note, I have been contemplating downsizing to a one-car family but I have a lot of reservations about this. We are planning to have my wife go SAHM probably in Jan or Feb but we also wanted to see how my new job goes, which is a telecommute job (but I may need to go work out of an office location every now and then). Having the flexibility of one more car isn't necessarily a bad thing here in SoCal. I suppose I could consider moving though :) We just have to see how things go with telecommuting. In terms of how this relates to the car seat, we're still going to need the seat either way as our boy gets older (and also if we decide to try for #2). Are car seats expected to just be a real PITA with cars from a couple decades ago?
Last resort is just to bring it all back to the PD and have someone take a look and help install (or tell us that it's not possible). The problem with that is that we have to schedule an appt for it in advance since they get backlogged with car seat installation help requests. It's worth the trouble though. Just wanted to get an idea if anyone else has installed a newer car seat in a [much] older vehicle.