Why is car seat held together with duct tape?

[Peaplant20]

So we have the cybex baby car seat. I pulled the covers off to wash the other day and noticed that the whole thing is held together with duct tape! Holding the polystyrene to the plastic. We bought it brand new and the tape is obviously part of it, it says “do not remove” all over the tape.

i was just wondering if anyone knows what it’s for? There’s a tiny crack in one of them (we’ve never had a crash or anything but the tape is very thin) and didn’t know whether I should tape over it with more duct tape or not - my husband reckons is there and is designed to rip if you’re in a crash so if you sell it second hand then people know it’s been in a crash. Ideas?

I think it's just used to keep it in place. Very common on all different brands of car seat. It's not usually duct tape, it's normally more like sellotape. It will usually be glued in place as well but the glue can fail over time.

If the polystyrene is cracked, which happens commonly even without a crash, just through normal wear and tear on the seat (or sometimes rough usage e.g. if kids rag on the headrest, the polystyrene can break) you can contact Cybex and ask them if it needs to be replaced. AFAIK sometimes they say no it's fine, and will indeed advise you to tape it - sometimes it is in a specific place where it will cause an issue so they say no don't use the seat - the polystyrene piece needs replacing. It basically depends where the crack is.

You can also contact wherever you bought it from for advice.

It's not "crash detector" tape but I wouldn't tape over it myself without having advice from Cybex or someone trained by Cybex.

Thanks for your reply :)