baby seat in a 996

[fivespddisco]

dose anyone have a pic of a baby seat in a 996 convertible? will it fit?

[smistry007]

no pics but I routinely put my 3 yr olds car seat in my 996 coupe- it even has the anchor for the car seat strap hook! :)

[Kim]

dose anyone have a pic of a baby seat in a 996 convertible? will it fit?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I routinely use the recent (not newest) Porsche OEM child seat in the front seat of my 2000 Cab for a 4-year old.

It uses the factory airbag deactivation device. A non Porsche seat may be used in the front seat, but some method must be used to deactivate the airbag.

There have been many posts from drivers who have shopped for a non-Porsche brand infant seat to fit in the rear seat of a 996 .... no airbag deactivation required.

I've pretty much beat the subject to death with posts here .... if if you would like to email me with any specific questions you may have, I will be more than happy to reply directly and not bore everyone else.

(yes, I can supply a picture if you really want one)

Kim

lkwelch@mindspring.com

[Hroussard]

I have a 1999 C2 and I have a BRITTAX seat in the back which fits perfectly. My son is a tall 5 year old and has no problems sitting in the BRITTAX seat in the back for long distances. Note that I can not have the passenger seat all the way back because there would not be enough space for his legs. Of course when he is 6, he can sit normally in the Porsche back seat as per the laws in California.

In general, the problem with a child car seat for the Porsche is the fact that the actual bottom of the seat is TOO WIDE ( left to right ). Seems the ONLY seat that can be adjusted down from 17 inches all the way to 12 inches is the Brittax. That's all it takes to make that seat fit perfectly. Note that I do not use ( and never have) the back of the child seat. I am using the seat more as a booster seat at this point . If you do use it with the back attached, you may find that the backrest of the child seat is pretty upright ( read uncomfortable)...I think a little too much for Cab and you may think about taking the Porsche backrest out and use the Brittax seat back instead of having the Porsche back rest just taking up space there.. If you use the Brittax seat it will bring the seating space several inches forward ie you now have TWO backs which will reduce the seating space between the backrest and the front passenger seat too much. I paid 70 bucks for the car seat.

The way I tried it out is that I drove my car to a Kid-R-us type shop where I knew they had the Brittax seat. I just tried is at the shop and as I said , it fits perfectly after I narrowed the bottom seat which, BTW, has even arms rests.

I can make a picture if you are interested.

Cheers

HarryR

[fivespddisco]

Thanks for the response. I am looking for a pic of the seat because my wife dose not belive it will fit. I have a boxster now, and would like to upgrade to a 996. In order to justify the extra money for the 996 it must be able to hold a car seat.

[Hroussard]

Here is a picture of my baby seat

[Hroussard]

Here is another one. As you can see, ample space.

[Hroussard]

Here is a view of the bottom of the seat . Note the black knob. This allows you to "push" the seat into a more narrow width.

[Hroussard]

I promise this is the last one. Just to show how this seat looks ( size wise) outside the car.

[fivespddisco]

wow thanks for all the pics. that seat is pretty cool. i was looking for something to hold an infant.do you think this will work?

[Hroussard]

Yes, I think it could if the infant is big enough to sit upright , I would say if the child can sit in a normal infant seat this would work, it's not a replacement for a basinet type child seat.

HarryR

[dr_karlb]

Is this what you need?

Its from Eddie Bauer.

My son has used this since he was about 18-months

[dr_karlb]

ooops... lets try again

[fivespddisco]

the cab with the seat! thanks for the pics, keep them comming

[Long Islander]

The seat that Harry has is really a booster seat, not an infant or baby seat. Booster seats are generally suitable for children over the age of 3, over 30 pounds and over 38 inches in height.

I now have an Evenflow convertible baby/child seat in the back seat of my 911 coupe, and it fits just fine. My daughter is now almost 3-1/2, around 31 pounds, and 37 inches, and she fits nicely in this seat. Here's a link to a picture of it.

http://www.986host.com/albums/Oggie/Porsch..._seat.sized.jpg

[SuperCarnitas]

Hi folks, my first post!

Oggie is absolutely right:

The seat that Harry has is really a booster seat, not an infant or baby seat. Booster seats are generally suitable for children over the age of 3, over 30 pounds and over 38 inches in height.

There's a very important distinction between an infant seat, a convertible seat, and a booster.

I had to try a handful of seats for our 20-mo old, who weighs just over 20 lbs, since the 996 rear seat has such an upright profile. We decided to go with an Evenflo Traditions, a forward-facing booster seat with a 5-point harness -- which is a key requirement for kids less than 30lbs. It doesn't review too well on Amazon, but for occasional use it's working out just fine. Seat attaches with the factory seatbelt (with the locking ratchet) -- no rear harness anchor on the C4 cab, let alone LATCH anchors.

Installed it looks like this:

... and we have a few more pics here.

[monsterbox]

Hi!

dose anyone have a pic of a baby seat in a 996 convertible? will it fit?

Sorry, no pic right now but some more info about this topic! We have a 2002 996 C4 Cabriolet and we bought the original Porsche baby seat as this was the only one which fits just perfect. The base is much less wide by special design than all other seats and it comes with the deactivator for the front airbag.

So it was absolutely clear for us to buy only this one. Our daugter likes the seat and she fits just perfect with her age of 5 1/2 and she's 4'2" tall. She still uses the back of the baby seat and it works for her.

If someone is interested I wil make a foto...

Bye,

Christian

[JSmith5690]

Thanks for the response. I am looking for a pic of the seat because my wife dose not belive it will fit. I have a boxster now, and would like to upgrade to a 996. In order to justify the extra money for the 996 it must be able to hold a car seat.

I also had to justify my upgrade from Boxster to 996 to my wife (I have a 3 week old infant). I use a Safety First brand rear facing infant seat. I will admit it is a tight fit, but it will fit. The front seat must be adjusted forward quite a ways, but it can be done. Went for a family outing just this past Sunday in the car.

[gas-man]

I have a 2001 C4 coupe and I have an 18 month old baby girl. Since she was 5 mos. old, I have use the Britax Roundabout and it fits very well with space to spare for my wife riding in front seat.

[jmj996]

We also went from a 986 to a 996 cab for the same reasons. In the beginning, we kept our 986 for a long time with our first infant riding in the front passenger seat with just one of us (usually just my wife and our first baby), and eventually after we had our second we got a 996 so that all four of us could ride together. I didn't see any really complete responses here on this one, and we have a lot of experience with this so I'll share what I can. We have two kids, now 3 yrs 1 month and 19 months. They have both been riding in our 986 and 996 cars since they were born. The older one has always enjoyed it and crawls into the 996 whenever she can (even when we don't intend to take that car). The younger one's stomach doesn't always agree with it, even when in the front seat. We have the 17" wheels with soft shoulders on the tires (Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3) and stock suspension, so as far as a 996 goes, it's the softest ride they can get.

Infants must ride in the Porsche Britax infant carrier in the front passenger seat (see attached pic). 996's and 986's must have the airbag deactivation kit installed, which results in an extra buckle under the front passenger seat that is used by a belt coming from the forward section of the infant seat. 997's and 987's have airbag deactivation switches and don't require a separate kit to be installed. You should not put an infant in the rear seat of a 996, the carrier was not designed to seat & secure properly in the back. As a result, when we used the infant carrier in the 996 and all four of us went somewhere, my wife had to sit in the back. She's only 5'-4", so it wasn't too bad for her. Just a comment - we LOVE having the infant carrier in the front, because the baby is always within the driver's immediate reach and within peripheral vision. There is nothing else like it, you can't do this with any other car on the market that I know of, because all other rear-facing seats are required to be installed in the back seat of other cars.

The Porsche junior seat is the next step (starting at 12 months). This is a forward-facing seat that can be used in the front or rear. It also has the special front buckle for the airbag deactivation kit when used in the front seat, and it has the rear strap (presumably for use in the Cayenne) and the seat latches, but in the 1999 996 we have, we cannot use either the rear strap or the latches. We just secure the seat in place with the rear seat belt. They can use this Junior seat for a very long time (the back even expands upward), but until they're much older, they have to use the lap pad. When they get older, they will just be using the seat with a seat belt across it (including shoulder strap run through the special routing clip). We currently have two of these in the back of our 996 (see pic of junior seats), and sometimes we move them to our SUV and use the safety strap and latches in the SUV.

Another note - there is somewhat of a gap for infants 9 months to 12 months. At about 9 months, they're almost too big for the infant carrier, but you're not supposed to face them forward in the junior seat until they're at least 12 months. We continued to use the infant seat carrier past nine months and their head was well within the side supports on the seat, but their legs were sticking way out.

I can't comment on the seats for older children yet, it will be a few years before we outgrow the junior seats, but the other pictures posted previously provide a picture of the booster.

[eastriver]

john, the Porsche junior seats look great!

can you show me how to secure it using safety belt?

thanks

[Ranger]

Edit: John Jones pointed out (and diplomatically so I might add) that I left some ambiguity on kid ages. None of the below applies to infants. I'm irritating, but not utterly whacked. I think that there is little question that an infant needs to be faced backwards. The twins didn't go into the 996 for trips to daycare until they were 2, having finally convinced my wife that the nanny for the twins was going to result in debtors prison. The twins were both in the Eddie Bauer seats in the back of the 996 until #2 son's legs got too long for the available space. Edit ends.

I have 3 kids in my '99 Coupe a couple times a week, because I pick them up from Daycare. Oldest is 4. I worked this child seat issue really hard and tried a number of products. As the kids have gotten bigger, the solutions have changed. Here's the saga.

#1 son started out in a Eddie Bauer seat, exactly as pictured in a previous post. But then he got big enough that he kept pushing on the passenger seatback with his feet. So then I got him a little booster seat at Walmart for ~$20. I cut off it's sides so it would be thinner and fit in the back better.

Then the twins came. #1 son went to the passenger seat and took the booster with him. So no airbag deactivation. I did a mess of research on this. Turns out that the whole airbags hurt kids thing is overblown. Heck, the whole child car seat thing is overblown. The '97 NTSA study that looked at airbags harming kids looked at kids that were ENTIRELY UNSECURED. A lot of those kids were in a passenger's lap. The report did not address kids that were properly secured. Then the media reported this as "car bags kill kids". When you think about how violently an airbag would hit an unsecured little kid as he went flying into the exploding dashboard, it's no wonder he'd get hurt.

Note that since a booster does not have a back, #1 son is farther away from the airbag too.

Of course my wife still gives me grief, but that's what wives are for.

In terms of car seats in general...read Freakonomics. They looked at the results of accidents with kids in car seats and kids properly secured in OEM seats. And they found no evidence in the data that car seats were helping. All that car seats did was make it harder for parents to allow their child to be completely unsecured.

Freakonomics also made the interesting point that this entire issue was largely invented by child seat manufacturers. Kind of like Valentines day. Heck, when I was a kid we had a milk crate for a passenger's seat. 40 yrs later I'm a BAD PARENT?

But I digress.

One of the twins is now too big for the Eddie Bauer car seat in the back, for the aforementioned reason. So #2 son is now in this harness sort of thing that I found on the Internet. Look up the Freedom Ride. I had to monkey with the Freedom Ride to make it easier to put on, but it seems to hold #2 pretty securely. Soon #3 will go into a Freedom Ride. And a year from now the twins can probably be trusted to not monkey with the OEM belts, and I'll get plastic boosters, cut off the sides, and use those little padded things that bind the lap and shoulder belt together so the shoulder belt doesn't ride too high.

Back to my digression. The laws differ among the states. GA's law says that you have to use a child seat unless for some reason it's not workable. Should I ever get pulled over and the police officer is annoyed with my child seat solution , I'll politely tell the him that I tried a number of child seats in the back and none of them fit well. If he wants to write me a ticket, fine. I'll happily pay the $50 as the fee associated with having an inexpensive entirely workable solution, and standing on principle against the increasingly intrusive "nanny state".

Edited April 30, 2007 by RangerGress

[jmj996]

john, the Porsche junior seats look great!

can you show me how to secure it using safety belt?

thanks

Sure! It's kind of difficult to get a good picture, so I just scanned in a page from the guide that show how to do this with the latch system, without a latch system, and for older kids without the front pad. I use the second column of instructions, except I cannnot use the tether strap in the back on my 996 cab, I have never seen a mounting point for it as the instructions point out on another page of this booklet.

Edited April 29, 2007 by John Jones

[jmj996]

Thanks for the update RangerGress.

John

Edited April 30, 2007 by John Jones

[eastriver]

thank you very much.

people like you make this site and over-all porsche experense a much better one :notworthy:

john, the Porsche junior seats look great!

can you show me how to secure it using safety belt?

thanks

Sure! It's kind of difficult to get a good picture, so I just scanned in a page from the guide that show how to do this with the latch system, without a latch system, and for older kids without the front pad. I use the second column of instructions, except I cannnot use the tether strap in the back on my 996 cab, I have never seen a mounting point for it as the instructions point out on another page of this booklet.