Booster seat question
 

Anyone have experience installing a booster seat in a 2008 Z06? Owners manual is confusing. Any suggestions will help.

My strong suggestion is for you look up a local police/fire station that has officers trained to provide suggestions and examine the installation and advise you properly based on the size of your child, the booster and how the seatbelt goes over their shoulder and lap.

The above suggestion is what I do as well. You want the lap portion of the belt to go over the lap and the chest part to go over the shoulder and not across the neck (when the belt is locked and going across the neck it would effectively be a knife against the neck in a sudden forward motion). General question I ask is if there is an accident and the retracting mechanism is locked is the child also locked into the seat (in effect being one with the seat) or is there any potential for movement? The airbag can injure the child due to his/her size should it go off. Again, take the time to seek out trained advice. Well worth the few minutes to do so :)

Not sure where you live but the OPP station at Hurontario and QEW is where I went several years back. The officer spent a good 20 mins with me to explain and verify my installation for my baby seat. Not all stations offer the service, but should know one that does. Hope that helps.

Maybe you can post up a pic of the seat. Are you talking about a booster seat with a 5 point harness built in (see pic below)? If so the above comments would not apply. In this case you would have to use the factory belt to hold down the seat and ensure the belt is locked so that the seat does not slide/tip forward under deceleration. I assume the C6 does not have anchors built into the factory seat which is why you are unsure what to do.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...221cacedea.jpg


if you are talking about a seat that uses the factory seatbelt over the child's chest (see pic below) then the first two responses to your post are related to this seat type.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...42b49f6182.jpg

I don't want this to come across the wrong way, but frankly we are talking about the safety of your son - trust no one ;). I strongly suggest you have a trained person help you. Your local dealership may be able to help or a police station.

You took it the wrong way. What I was trying to say is I am sharing my experience from a few years ago. Things and seats may have changed so what I would suggest may be the wrong advice. It was confusing to me as well and I ended up having a cop help me out and educated a few of my friends with kids based on what I had learned along the way cause they installed their seats incorrectly. I dont want that to happen to you which is why I said trust no one (including me!). Hope that clears things up. There was no intention to offend at all.

Please reread my post I did not say what you think I did - was actually bashing myself and never said that you dont trust what was suggested.

No worries man - this is your kid's safety we are talking about so I get it :).

The thing I learned is that with any seat you install, it should move as one unit with the factory seat in the event of a collision. Any additional movement of the booster or forward facing seat would increase the chance of injury to your son.

Hope this helps and if there is any doubt on how you installed, the police can help you as they have staff trained specifically for this stuff.

Can you install a booster seat in the front? Since there are no back seats I don't think you can. Plus you need a tether point to fasten the seat which the vettes don't have I believe.

Legally, YES.

The rear seat is always the preferred / recommended location for kids, but since that option does not exist in a Corvette, the front seat is 100% legal.

And there IS a tether anchor in the rear hatch area for clipping a child seat anchor to. However, Corvettes (at least not up to my 2011?) do not have the more common "LATCH" system, so you simply use the factory seat belt to secure a child seat.

I've used a seat like this one pictured here (also a Britax) for my 4- and 6-year olds. Works perfect. I make sure it's DAMN good and snug, so basically I can almost rock the whole car while shoving the booster seat back and forth (yes, there is some movement side-to-side, but it is VERY minimal). There is ZERO forward movement. Given that the combined weight of the car seat itself (guessing ~10lbs?) + either of my boys (~45-50lbs max) is far less than the weight of an adult, I'm going to assume that in a frontal impact, the amount of force exerted on the factory seatbelt would be far less than if an adult were occupying the seat.

Also of interest, with either of my boys in the seat, it is not enough weight to trigger the airbag sensor, so the passenger side airbag (according to the symbol on the rearview mirror) is disabled. I've tested to ensure that it's working - ie: the airbag light turns on if I sit in the passenger's seat. So (depending on the weight of your kid) there should be no concern of them being injured by the (deactivated) airbag.

My boys love riding in the Corvette. And I love being able to bring them along (...it is unfortunate that I can only take 1 at a time, but I couldn't succumb to buying a Camaro).


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...221cacedea.jpg

^^ not sure what year your vette is but I make sure to turn the airbag off using the switch in my C5 glovebox (don't know if other years give you that option). Maybe I'm paranoid but I just can't trust that it won't activate and injure my youngest in the event of a collision (when my eldest is in the car I switch it back on). Just something to consider if you have the option to switch it off.

And what you describe above is how I also used/installed the child seat. :thumbs:

I have a 2011 (C6). I'm not aware of a way to disable it other than the weight sensor built into the seat. Like I mentioned, if I sit in the seat, the symbol turns on (on the rearview mirror) showing the passenger airbag active. With nobody in the passenger's seat (or even when my kids are sitting in it) the symbol for airbag DISABLED is lit on the rearview.

All I can do is trust that the engineers did their job properly and the system is activated / deactivated appropriately!

And at the end of the day, IMO, Corvettes are probably one of the safest / best built cars on the road. Anything that could happen in the 'Vette is just as likely (or more) to happen in any other car. So it's a roll of the dice. Life's short ... I'll take my chances :cool:.

^^^ having witnessed a C4 ZR1 rollover on the Gardiner many moons ago I couldn't agree more. That car was totalled but the passenger cabin was in tact and did the job. I keep telling people, the biggest safety features on these cars are their brakes, power and agility to avoid things that would get others and their structure when all else fails.

Yeah looks like post 2006 the manual switch was removed...
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...er-airbag.html