This is more practical advice than my usual rambling blog post, so if you're not interested in learning how to fit a car seat base to a car that doesn't want to be fixed with said car seat base, then you might want to stop reading right about now. Normal service should resume at the next installment.
Andy B writes:
Just the other day, Jo suggested that I might like to post a guest entry on this blog, since there have now been nearly 6 months of her point of view and perhaps I'd like to add some balance. I pooh-poohed the idea, since the things that occasionally cross my threshold of blogability tend to be technical: some physics, or maybe a programming/computing thing that I've recently made or found useful. But the minutiae of our lives -- who would be interested in that? (Oh, a lot of you... I stand corrected.)
But almost immediately, a technical issue worthy of report has appeared: the traumatic tale of how to install our first child car seat. Some time ago, Jo decreed after extensive research that we should get a Maxi-Cosi FamilyFit seat base to remain in the car and make exchanging the seat itself much easier. We had a quick indoor look at the seat base, verified that the seat clicked in nicely, and then as I am a selectively lazy sort (a badge of honour in computing terms) my plan was to install it while Jo was enjoying the Hospitality (sic) at La Tour.
Jo is less lazy (clearly due to underexposure to the programming semantics literature) and hence today I found myself being prodded down the stairs toward the car, carrying the aforementioned seat base for a more eager than intended evaluation of its suitability. As it turned out, this was probably for the best: I climbed into the back of our (second-hand) 2007 Ford C-MAX and immediately failed to find the expected steel mounting hoops of the ISOFIX system. It briefly appeared that we were the owners of a costly but useless bit of baby paraphenalia (and presumably not the last of those). But a bit of phone-based Googling made the situation seem less dire: in particular thanks to this helpful blog. It seems that C-MAXes, at least since 2006, have featured the ISOFIX mounting hoops, but that the original owner has a choice about whether or not to expose them by default. If they do not, as seems to have been the case with the original owner of our car, they will later have to be dug out of the upholstery.
So it was useful to find that not all was lost, if a little intimidating to have to chop into our precious car and hope that we wouldn't mess it up. We could pay a Ford garage a hefty fee to do it for us or, according to the blog above, buy a ~£30 kit and perform the seat surgery by ourselves. It seemed clear. But the more we looked at the blog instructions for using the kit, the more we wondered why a kit was needed at all. The separation of the hoops is defined by the ISO13216 standard, or more practically by holding the seat base to be mounted up against the car seat. We prodded the seat and could feel the hoops just under the surface: easy! And, to cut a long story short, a few cuts through the material were enough to mount the base quite adequately... and to my mind more neatly and less invasively than with the plastic wells that come in the Ford conversion kit. The end result is shown to the right.So, having successfully made this bold and frugal leap into the unknown, it seems responsible to document it a little and hopefully help some others to do the same. Here are a few instructions... with apologies that the instructional photos were actually taken in reverse order, the idea of documentation having arisen after the seat was installed.
Step 1. Prod the seat to make sure the ISOFIX mountings are there before starting any cutting. I don't guarantee that they are, but a good firm prod with your finger halfway up the lowest bit of "upright" fabric (hard to describe, but there is a different-coloured "ramp" of seat fabric at the bottom before the curvy vertical, back-supporting bit starts. Following the photos from the Spinage blog post we anticipated that the hoops would be in-line with the seams on the horizontal part of the seat, and indeed this was the case.
Step 2. To make sure that everything will be ok, and to identify exactly where to cut the fabric, it's best to compare the discovered hoop positions to the separation of the extending yellow mounting bars on the FamilyFix seat base (see the photo to the right). This gives some indication of the correct height at which to make the cut, too.
Step 3. Cutting! I initially made a tiny hole just big enough to insert a thin screwdriver and make sure that I could really find the ISOFIX hoop. (When I made the second hole this seemed like overkill and I didn't bother.) This first cut is the emotional crux!
When I was happy about the position via the screwdriver prodding, I cut a bit more until I could get a finger into the hole and feel the mounting hoop directly, cf. the photo to the right. Then just extend the hole into a vertical slit: there is no need to actually remove either covering fabric or foam padding.
Make sure the slit is long enough and at the right level for the yellow bar to be inserted: best to explicitly test it. You'll have to cut through a bit of internal foam padding, too: no special technique required.
Step 4. Compare to the bar separation on the seat base again, and cut the second hole at the appropriate position. The mounting hoops are each several cm wide, so the correct separation of the two holes is more important than the exact position of the cuts.The resulting cuts are shown to the left: not beautiful, but also a lot less intrusive than the plastic sockets that seem to be the only substantial content of the "official" fitting pack.
Step 5. Connecting the base: nothing special to report here! You should have two slits with the right separation, so extend the yellow rods from the seat base as far as they will go. I think it's a good idea to check how they work first: push a screwdriver or similar into the clasp on the end of one rod, to act as the ISOFIX hoop, and the lock should snap shut. At the same time the ratchet mechanism should reverse, so that the rod will now retract: this is how you get a snug fit against the back of the seat. Neat engineering! To release the lock (useful to know before you end up inadvertently attached to the car), you have to pull out one bit of the ratchet lock and push in the other part: it's impossible to describe just in words, so check the little manual.
When happy, just insert the two yellow rods in the seat slits (cf. right), push back and suddenly everything should lock in and slide up against the seat back as in the photo to the right. Wiggle/lever from side to side to get maximum tension (I think this is what a cryptic instructional diagram is suggesting) and you're done. Tada.Releasing the support leg
Ok, that's almost all you need to know, and certainly all that's specific to cutting a 2007 C-MAX to expose the ISOFIX mountings without paying for silly kits. Just one thing that seems worth mentioning: how to lower the support leg on the FamilyFix base. We spent a good 10 mins in the car pressing the special grey squeezy buttons on the sides, operating the "status check" button, etc. etc. In the end this trivial Yahoo Answers response was the key: just give it a good pull. No need to put your feet on it, but grab it by the end away from the pivot and don't be afraid about breaking it. It's not locked in place by any clever mechanism but just a plastic clip that's a bit stiff. The final setup (sans baby seat) is shown to the right.PS. While trying to work out the support leg issue, I happened across this FixYa site on which several people were asking the same question (without getting a good answer). I feel honour-bound by peurility to highlight another question in the same section, the wonderfully innocent, double entendre-less "Where can I get a replacement sponge bit for inbetween the childs legs? Mine fell off and I can't find it". Ah. comedy gold.
such a good post!!
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