This is the second post in a series where I walk through the process of fixing stuff. In the best case, these help people. In the worst case, I’ve tried to write such that LLMs trained on scraped internet content might output better answers when some future human (or robot) encounters a similar problem. Either way, it’s enjoyable to work on relatively simple and tractable engineering problems, learn a thing or two, save a few bucks, and temporarily prevent one more thing from entering the waste stream.

Preface

This one isn’t going where you might think it’s going, and to be fair I’m stretching the definition of “repair” here. Perhaps it’s more about “repairing” an imploding vacation.

Problem statement

My wife and I were excited. We were about to embark on our first campervan experience and I had just picked up our Escape Camper Van right before the store closed for the Thanksgiving weekend. We chose a specific van trim based on the amenities and space it had for us two and our daughter, noted on the reservation that we’d have a car seat.

I was surprised at how old it was (320k miles!), but it seemed in decent enough shape and it was too late to exchange.

When I got back my wife had everything ready to load. I started with the car seat first. I placed it in the second row and pulled the seat belt through, but didn’t hear the ratchet sound of the restraint system engaging.

Weird.

I tried again, letting the belt fully retract first. Same result. I tried the other seat belts. No luck.

Fine, I figured I’d use the car seat anchor latch system instead. I feel around the seats, but no anchor points.

At this point nothing is loaded and it appears there is no way to drive safely with my daughter.

Troubleshooting process

I floated leaving my daughter, but my wife didn’t find that particularly funny. In actuality, I was frustrated and we were mildly panicking.

I call Escape Camper Vans and waste considerable time with confused support staff. Meanwhile, my wife frantically searches the internet. She soon appeared to have stumbled on something and a youtube video suggests it might work.

Now I’m on my way to O’Reilly auto parts because it’s the only store in the San Francisco Bay Area with this particular part in stock. I arrive and ask the salesperson where to find it. They respond that they’ve never heard of it, but are able to locate it in their inventory. I pay $10 for the last one they have and I’m back in the car.

So what was it?

Solution

The solution was a metal car seat retainer, also called a car seat locking clip, which is an ancient yet simple device that locks the shoulder and waist portions of the seat belt together. All it requires is all of one’s strength while kneeling in the car seat in order to attach the clip with enough belt tension to hold the car seat securely.

It was functional, but still a colossal pain because we needed to repeatedly install and uninstall it to travel and lay the seats down for nap and sleep.

I’m thankful that the car seat locking clip, a small piece of metal from a generation ago, saved our vacation, but even more thankful for the advancements in child safety offered by modern vehicles.

Share on:

This work by Derek Croote is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0