Halfords car seat

[Thefaceofboe]

Does anyone have this Halfords essentials car seat? If so, please tell me how the fuck you install it. Followed the (shitty) instructions but it’s so loose and obviously not safe so we must be doing something wrong.

not looking for advice on the car seat itself, it’s to be used for emergencies in my partners work van, my almost 2YO has a rear racing one in our family car. Thanks

Look on you tube , I've had to do that with another car seat before

Can you go back and ask them to demonstrate?

@sleepismyhobby ive followed a YouTube video for a similar car seat from Halfords, but they do it exactly the same and their seat doesn’t move. It’s really confusing

@LIZS we can, but you have to book an appointment so we didn’t bother, but I didn’t expect it to be this difficult.

Of course the instructions are a nightmare too

Is it definitely compatible with your car?

By the looks of your photo it's fitted right, if it's still moving, could it have forward anchorage? It does look quite thin.

Basically with a belt fitted seat you need the belt to come from behind the seat over and around it. The belt path you've used here looks like the serpentine one where it goes over one side, back through the back of the seat "under" again and then over the opposite side and plugs in.

You need it to go over / under / over so that when you tighten the belt, it pulls the child seat backwards into the vehicle seat and holds it firm.

The problem is if your seat back / path is quite narrow, sometimes the two anchoring points (where the lap belt comes out of the seat and where your seatbelt clicks into the buckle) are positioned further forward than the belt path. In this case you can't possibly pull the seat back by pulling tight, there just isn't any tension there. The seat will be loose, and I'm afraid that means it's incompatible. Unless you can move the vehicle seat forwards to make the belt anchorings further back in comparison, you shouldn't use the seat in that vehicle as it will be unsafe (this is nothing to do with FF vs RF or cheap vs expensive seats, it's just a compatability issue).

I can try and do a diagram if my explanation is unhelpful.

This is a good demo of the serpentine belt path.

You need to get yourself kneeling on the seat, with your kneecaps pressed right into the back of the seat and yank the belt, from the buckle. First yank the "horizontal" part of the belt from the right towards the buckle, then yank the "vertical" part from the buckle up to the ceiling. Then all the loose belt gets fed back through the routing on the chair to the bit where the belt comes out of the car wall. All the while keep as much of your body weight pressed into the chair as possible.

Also it looks like the seat sits too far over to the right - have you tried installing it into the middle van seat instead?

Actually this is quite a good explanation/demo of forward anchorage showing how much movement you get with it.

I wouldn't go to Halfords and ask them - they will probably give you some useless advice and say it's fine There was a watchdog a while ago saying they don't get trained on the own-brand seats either and something like 80% of them were fitted wrongly when staff members were asked to demo.

Thanks everyone, really helpful comments. My partner is taking it upto Halfords but I will check when back and see if it feels secure enough

So Halfords fit the car seat today, turns out we did it right but surely this isn’t right?! It moves around so freely

Bloody hell! That doesn’t look safe at all

Wow, I'd be worried the person from Halfords wasn't actually sure what they were doing. Is that seat belt twisted?

No, this is completely wrong, and it's different from what you did, isn't it?

Please watch the first video that I posted a link to - Margaret gives a really good explanation of the Serpentine belt path as well as a video demo of what to do and what not to do and why. I know the seats in her video aren't the exact one that you have, but almost all the seats on the market with the two holes in the back like yours has fits this way, and none of them fit in the way that the Halford's employee has done it, and I can explain why. I'll do a bit of a diagram, hang on.

I've uploaded a picture of a seat of a similar type to yours - underneath the padding, if you take the covers off you can see there are two holes in the shell. This isn't necessary to fit the seat, it's just so you can see why I've drawn two black ovals on the diagram.

The second picture is my hastily drawn Paint diagram. You can see the line drawing of a similar car seat taken from a manual, with the holes drawn in.

The green is what you've done in your original picture from this morning. This is the CORRECT belt path. It's over the front of the seat at the two sides, then under and through the back for the middle section. Underneath this is a top-down view. I've made it very loose and wiggly in my picture so you can see where it's supposed to go, obviously IRL you would tighten it a lot more. You can see here that the bottom of the seat is secured because the lap belt is going through the "arm rests" of the booster part, the top of the seat is secured because the diagonal belt is going through the shoulder guide and the red clip on the left side, and the overall installation has tension because it's gone through and around the seat turning six times which allows the belt to hold with friction. If this fitting is loose in your car it might be because of the position of your seatbelt buckles.

The blue one on the right (and red underneath) is what the Halford's employee has done and this is a very common error but it is totally incorrect and isn't securing the seat at all. In fact, because the backrest and the booster seat part aren't actually firmly connected what they have done is simply connect the back but they haven't secured the base of the seat at all. It's also totally loose with nothing to connect and no tension because you haven't made any turns around the seat. It's very dangerous, definitely do not use the seat like this.

The manuals on these generic models are frequently confusing and it's difficult to see which part of the belt is supposed to be going over and which under, which is one of the big problems with them. I also can't find the right manual online and the fitting video on the Halfords website is of a totally different model of seat so it is no use.

I know I'm just a random person on a website, so I would recommend you don't take my word for it but contact one of the safety organisations such as Good Egg Safety or Child Seat Safety Limited.

https://www.goodeggcarsafety.com/
https://childseatsafety.co.uk/

I'm posting this as a separate comment because MN gets a bit confused if you do links and photos in the same post - but see this Watchdog segment from 8 years ago (bloody hell, 8 years!) - exactly the same experience you've had today, seems like all the promises of extra training are really just lip service. You are not the only story I've heard like this from Halford's.

The fitting that you've been shown today is shown and discussed in the segment starting at approx 6:18. They classed it as one of the worst possible fittings.

Later on, they crash test the same error starting at 10:22. It's not nice watching (just as a warning).

As they say, there's nothing wrong with these seats. Yes, they are basic, but they meet the legal crash testing standards and therefore offer protection as long as they are fitted correctly. The problem comes when the instructions are so poor that they are difficult to fit correctly and even more so when the staff who are supposed to show you how to do it properly get it wrong.

Please don't use it, until you are sure it's properly fitted, and do make a complaint to Halford's!

I would actually consider returning it and getting something like a Graco Extend R129 or Britax Evolva, because Graco (owned by Joie) and Britax are both reputable companies and not only do they have better instructions, they both have a customer service department who will answer queries about fitting. I appreciate these are seats at a higher price point though.

@BertieBotts thank you for explaining that in depth, we have managed to fit in correctly and it feels completely secure now.

I’m furious they advertise car seat fitting and can’t do it properly

Oh I'm glad you've managed to get it secure.

It's really awful and frightening that they would send you away with that fitting that they did.

Glad you've sorted it. There should be clip that goes on the seatbelt near where you click it in that holds the belt right so it doesn't move around. We had that seat and had no problems with it.

@inappropriateraspberry

there is no clip, but I did question this as there seems to be a red clip in all the videos I’ve watched. The seat seems very secure now but concerned it’s not safe without the clip?

tempted to just return it. We only went with a cheaper seat as chances are we won’t ever use it, but we need one for emergencies

Yes, you should have a red clip! You can buy replacements (our original snapped after so long) but I'd take it back and check.

www.halfords.com/baby-and-child/how-to-guides/halfords-group-0-1-2-child-car-seat-fitting-instructions.html

This is for an older model I think, but same fitting - you need the clip!

The video you have posted is a Group 0/1/2 seat which is a different kind of seat with a different fitting to the one OP has. They are rear facing and forward facing for different age groups.

OP has a Group 1/2/3 seat. It's only forward facing.

It's common for the combo rear facing / forward facing belt fitted seats to have the kind of belt path which uses a belt clip like this - all the Joie seats for example use one somewhere. In these seats because the belt just goes straight through without any turning or twisting, you need the belt clip to stop it from slipping back through the buckle and loosening.

The OP's seat uses the holes in the shell and the over - under - over method (called serpentine belt path) and the friction from all these turns to stop the belt from slipping and that's why it likely doesn't have a clip because it doesn't need one. Not all seatbelt fitted car seats use a clip like this, some of them do. Other seats use the more complicated belt path, like the one I've shown previously, or a belt tensioning system, which is often something like a lever (e.g. Maxi Cosi Tobi) or a way to open up the seat to fit it and then close it to tension (e.g. Britax King, or the Cybex Aton base).

If the seat does need a clip it will say so in the manual. Serpentine belt path seats don't usually come with or need a clip. Like how infant carriers can often be belt fitted but do not usually have a clip.

I haven't found a video for this specific seat so looking at other videos with clips in probably won't be very helpful. Even the 123 one on Halfords' own website is a different model of seat, though looks like it has a similar fitting method.

Well Halfords have fitted it in the way it would if used with a clip! Definitely wrong then!
It may be worth getting a clip to out on the seatbelt anyway to make sure it's tight enough.