Car seat suggestions (for 6 year old) for long seatbelt stalks in campervan

[ParkerPyne]

We bought a Britax Romer Kid fix pro but unfortunately the seatbelt stalks in our van are too long and are sitting too close to the green belt routing area in a way that is warned against in the fitting instructions.

I’ve seen the Axkid Up which looks like I could raise the seat high enough to avoid it at least until my child gets quite a lot taller. But it’s really expensive if we’ve made a mistake and it still doesn’t fit properly. I also looked at the Besafe flex fix 2 which doesn’t have the same sort of routing area as the Britax seat we currently have but suspect that the belt buckle might still end up in a bad position across the belt routing area.

We live miles from any fitting centre so I was hoping someone on here might have solved this in a campervan with a similar issue or has any thoughts on seats with a higher than usual base that might mean the area that the belt goes through is higher up that typical.

Hmm tricky. You say you're miles from any fitting centre but do you have anything like a Halfords or John Lewis or Smyths or even Argos? With high back boosters, you can get the decent ones even at the more generic stores, so you don't need a specialist particularly. And assuming you don't have isofix on that seat, you might even be better off with a seat without isofix, so that it's not heavy. As long as you get a good belt fit with a booster seat, the brand doesn't really matter that much. The benefit of the more expensive brands is that they tend to work well with more vehicles and not have the belt "stick" too much in the guides. So if you're buying a cheaper one, just make sure to check it in the van with the child ideally before you buy.

Booster seat bases are typically about the same height, aside from the ones which convert from another kind of seat, often the massive multi stage ones are a bit higher up. But that in itself can make the seat heavy, so not ideal to fit without isofix, even though it's allowed for most of them. And some of the multi stage ones have really bad belt fit in booster mode.

The only thing I can think to suggest is maybe a Joie/Graco - those tend to be quite wide at the base so it might allow for a bit more flex.

You might be right that Axkid Up solves the issue but only until your child is a bit older. It might actually cost less to take the van to a garage and look at getting a shorter belt buckle put in.

@BertieBotts I’m so sorry for not replying and thanking you for your spot on advice here! It was such a stressful faff because we needed to travel on holiday using the car seat that I forgot to post a reply. I hope this helps someone stuck in the same position maybe at some point.

We were very lucky with a trip to Halfords as suggested and a very patient assistant let us try several. For anyone else who finds themself in this position Joie was a great suggestion - specifically their rotating seats as the spinning base pushes everything higher up and out of the way. We went with the Joie i-Bold Group 1/2/3 Car Seat* and the *Joie I-Spin 360 Max
would also have been fine but it was out of stock and we needed it the same day at that point. Thanks again BertieBotts!