Captian's Chairs and child car seats

[rmic]

I'm looking into buying a Delica but noticed the seatbelts on the captain's chairs are not the type that can accomodate a baby/child seat. Anyone done any modifications to the seatbelts so they can use a child seat?

[sahdot]

I had two rear facing infant seats for my twins in the captain's chairs of my '92 super exceed using the mid row shoulder belts which were introduced in late '91. I used the clip that came with the infant seat to clamp the belt where it went through the male part of the clasp thus stopping the belt from slipping through. This effectively held the seat by the lap portion only - the shoulder portion still loose because of the design of the inertia style belts. The only drawback was the fact the chairs couldn't rotate or slide forward and back because they were now secured to the side of the van. It worked for me with the driver's side chair all the way forward and the other seat all the way back giving good access to both. To get to the back row seats one had to go between the two captain's chairs.

I bought two more of the clips from w*l-m*rt to see if I could use the pair of them in tandem to shorten one of the separate lap belts on these seats so I could eliminate the shoulder belts entirely, that way freeing the seats to move around, but I will have to wait for my next van to try this.

Search the site for "seat belts" - there were some good posts on the subject for older kid's seats and a link for replacement ratchet style belts.

-jim

[mattias]

We use a rear-facing child seat for our 7 month old daughter. We secured the seat with the shoulder belt configuration outlined in the car seat manual. We made sure to use the seat belt clip to eliminate belt slippage and slack. This is especially important because the Delica shoulder belts are not the ratchet-style which you can pull all the way out in order to have it ratchet back onto the spool. Once I had the correct length of seatbelt measured out I was surprised at how secure the seat was.


Securing a forward-facing toddler seat with the shoulder belt AND latch takes a little more ingenuity. Since there is no latch anchor on the captain chairs I recently added bolt hangers onto the two rear bolts of each chair. I will post a photo of this modification at some point.

[DelicaMark]

I recently added bolt hangers onto the two rear bolts of each chair

. This is what I was going to do so I could still move the chairs around. It would be great to see how you did it and if you had any further suggestions. I have until June to figure this out so I am not in a huge rush.

-Mark

[Mystery Machine]

It may not be of any use to you, but I recently retro-fitted inertia 3point belts into the back of my L300 from an L400!! Straight fit!

The two negative issues here are:

A) My L300 had previousy been fitted with inertia belts that I removed when I stripped the motor out in the back. This meant the mounting points were already in place for the L400 inertia belts

B) You guys don't have access to L400's yet, so sourcing belts is a bit tricky for you - but here in the UK there is a real shortage of L300's being broken yet a wealth of L400's (including one on my drive!!)

Now - my friend has just recently purchased an L300 which is a 1988 model and so will not have inertia belts. If you like I can try and get over to his and pull a few panels off to see how easy/impossible it will be to retro-fit inertia belts into a lap belt equipped L300?

If it turns out that inertia belts can easliybe fitted, I have NO problem in trying to source and send you inertia belts from the UK??

Let me know what you think and I'll go and investigate?

[rmic]

Thanks for all the info. Looks like the one Delica we were looking at did not have the shoulder belts fitted. We looked at a few more this weekend and they did have shoulder belts. The best part is we can get 3 child seats across the rear bench seat.