Britax Sale @ Babycenter.com

[wdc330i]

Originally Posted by rwg

I am having a hell of a time making the britax fit in the e90. So much so that we bought a more upright sitting car seat today. fwiw. We checked out the Recaro version, but the kid hated the confinement. Ended up with . . . something else. comfort kid or something. It goes to 80 pounds with a harness.

Really? Can you elaborate. We're considering an e90. We have one child forward facing in a Britax Decathalon. But we also hope to have another child, so we'd be back into rear-facing for awhile.

[Rob]

The angle of the Britax seats is more reclined then the angle of the car seats. If you rest the back of the child seat against the back of the car seat, the front lip of the child seat base digs into the car seat.

To avoid this, you have to pull the base of the child seat away from the back of the car seat. With the latch system in place and the teather in place, you can make the seat sit firmly attached in this position, but you lose foot room. While our judgment is perhaps skewed b/c our other car is a mini van with all the room in the world, our girl already puts her feet up on the seats in front of her when I move the seat in front of her forward.

It's not that I don't think you can make the seat work safely. It's just a pain, I worry about what I am doing to the leather of the car seat, the car is new, and it doesn't have to be that way.

The seat we got this past weekend fits much better, but it's not a seat to start with. I think it is rated for 30 pounds to 80 pounds. It has a harness for that time frame - I think that's better then using a seatbelt with a convertible, but time might prove me wrong.

I think TD and JST both use Britax seats in the e90 and neither have complained about them, so I suspect it has something to do with your own personal idiosyncracies.

I do recommend using something like this - it was painless to install and makes me not worry about hte backs of the front seats at all and it's like $10 for a set of 2:

http://www.amazon.com/Graco-Seat-Pro...sim_ba_title_2

[JST]

Originally Posted by rwg

The angle of the Britax seats is more reclined then the angle of the car seats. If you rest the back of the child seat against the back of the car seat, the front lip of the child seat base digs into the car seat.

To avoid this, you have to pull the base of the child seat away from the back of the car seat. With the latch system in place and the teather in place, you can make the seat sit firmly attached in this position, but you lose foot room. While our judgment is perhaps skewed b/c our other car is a mini van with all the room in the world, our girl already puts her feet up on the seats in front of her when I move the seat in front of her forward.

It's not that I don't think you can make the seat work safely. It's just a pain, I worry about what I am doing to the leather of the car seat, the car is new, and it doesn't have to be that way.

The seat we got this past weekend fits much better, but it's not a seat to start with. I think it is rated for 30 pounds to 80 pounds. It has a harness for that time frame - I think that's better then using a seatbelt with a convertible, but time might prove me wrong.

I think TD and JST both use Britax seats in the e90 and neither have complained about them, so I suspect it has something to do with your own personal idiosyncracies.

I do recommend using something like this - it was painless to install and makes me not worry about hte backs of the front seats at all and it's like $10 for a set of 2:

http://www.amazon.com/Graco-Seat-Pro...sim_ba_title_2

We still have our Roundabout mounted in the center position in the E90. I can see, as she is getting bigger, that the whole kicking the seat thing is going to be a bigger concern, but having the seat in the middle helps somewhat. Obviously, with two kids this doesn't work.

I don't think I've tried to mount the Roundabout in the outboard seats on the BMW yet, though as she is getting heavier and harder to sling into the middle of the car I've been thinking about it.

As for the leather issue, we got one of those under-the-car-seat seat protectors (like this one http://www.babyage.com/products/56-_...seat_saver.htm), and it does what it's intended to do--distributes the pressure of the car seat and makes it much less likely that you are going to puncture the leather or irretrievably crush the seat foam. It's ugly, but you don't really see it in a black interior.

[Rob]

I have a seat protecter for the seat too, but that one looks better. I think I will try it.

JST, you are a better man then I - I didn't even consider putting the seat in the middle. Of course, I put the infant carrier in the back sometimes, so it would be impractical. Yeah, that's it.

I suppose I should mention that the seat is the Decathalon, but all of the Britax bases appear to be the same to me (except for that really big seat they have that goes to 80 pounds and doesn't fit in a normal car).

[ff]

Why do Britax seats need to be so darned big, anyhow? Is that so they can charge twice as much as anyone else for the same, basic product? Bigger must be better, right?

[JST]

Originally Posted by ff

Why do Britax seats need to be so darned big, anyhow? Is that so they can charge twice as much as anyone else for the same, basic product? Bigger must be better, right?

I don't think that the Roundabout is that much larger than comparable seats.

[ff]

Originally Posted by JST

I don't think that the Roundabout is that much larger than comparable seats.

I wonder which one it is that I saw in Target a while back. It looked like something that a person would have trouble fitting in even a full-sized SUV. Just didn't make sense to me.

[JST]

Originally Posted by ff

I wonder which one it is that I saw in Target a while back. It looked like something that a person would have trouble fitting in even a full-sized SUV. Just didn't make sense to me.

Maybe the Marathon?

The difference in size between the Roundabout and the Marathon is likely attributable to the fact that the Roundabout only takes kids up to 40 lbs, whereas the Marathon goes up to 65 lbs.

http://www.elitecarseats.com/Britax-...ut.pro#pp-tabs

http://www.elitecarseats.com/Britax-...on.pro#pp-tabs

There's also the Boulevard, which is even bigger than the Marathon but also has a 65 lb limit. Not sure why it's bigger.

http://www.elitecarseats.com/Britax-...rd.pro#pp-tabs

[ff]

When you look at those images of the seats, they look to be pretty normal sized. I wonder how many people buy them based on that, only to have them arrive at their door, packed in an elephant crate.

[wdc330i]

Originally Posted by rwg

The angle of the Britax seats is more reclined then the angle of the car seats. If you rest the back of the child seat against the back of the car seat, the front lip of the child seat base digs into the car seat.

To avoid this, you have to pull the base of the child seat away from the back of the car seat. With the latch system in place and the teather in place, you can make the seat sit firmly attached in this position, but you lose foot room. While our judgment is perhaps skewed b/c our other car is a mini van with all the room in the world, our girl already puts her feet up on the seats in front of her when I move the seat in front of her forward.

It's not that I don't think you can make the seat work safely. It's just a pain, I worry about what I am doing to the leather of the car seat, the car is new, and it doesn't have to be that way.

The seat we got this past weekend fits much better, but it's not a seat to start with. I think it is rated for 30 pounds to 80 pounds. It has a harness for that time frame - I think that's better then using a seatbelt with a convertible, but time might prove me wrong.

I think TD and JST both use Britax seats in the e90 and neither have complained about them, so I suspect it has something to do with your own personal idiosyncracies.

I do recommend using something like this - it was painless to install and makes me not worry about hte backs of the front seats at all and it's like $10 for a set of 2:

http://www.amazon.com/Graco-Seat-Pro...sim_ba_title_2

Thanks for the detailed response. We had an e90 loaner for about a week when the 5 was in the shop, and the only thing I noticed about installing our Decathalon was that the LATCH anchors were very hard to reach. Anyway, both the Decathalon and the Marathon (we have both) fit just fine backward and forward in my e46, so I presumed that the e90--which has more rear leg room--wouldn't prove a problem.