After buying the perfect carseat on the grey market which fits perfectly into our car, I haven't paid much attention to them.
But Daddy Type Jay emailed in with a question about whether to get a car seat leveller to fix "some serious incline" in the backseat of his wife's Saab 98.
Users on Amazon say to use cut-to-measure pieces of those foam pool tubes; we used a folded up blanket to level out our first (loaner) car seat. My hunch is to stop by a fire station and get an official-style installation from them. Anyone else have some experience with levelling a car seat?
Car Seat Levellers are $9.99 at babiesrus/amazon. According to some random amazonian, foam "'water noodles' are like $1 at Wal-Mart", plus the hit to your self-esteem for asking where the water noodles are.
I actually went out and bought that exact leveler and just wound up cutting it in half to make the seat level. The pics that come on the box only show it with infant carriers so I can see why it's so big but with an actual car seat, it was way too big.
The one thing about this particular material is that it is very, very sturdy. I don't know about the pool noodles, but this one is not likely to compress and allow any shifting down the road.
I would say that the $10 I spent was good piece of mind for my wife who doesn't trust using things that are not being used for their intended purpose - especially when it comes to the boy.
Meanwhile, I'm holding out for half a water noodle to turn up on craigslist.
Pool noodles rock. I used a single hunk of one to level a Britax Roundabout (rearfacing) in my '97 Blazer. I duct taped 3 pieces together to get the Roundabout leveled in my wife's 2000 Mazda 626. (I payed $1 or so for a pack of THREE pool noodles on end-of-season clearance at Toys R Us.)
I leveled a Britax Roundabout (rear facing) in my Subaru Outback with a 2x4. Readily available piece of scrap lumber, right length and no compression.
I am a firefighter and we actually use water noodles from Walmart and cut them to size. If it's not big enough we tape 2 or 3 together. This is what we do at the Official car seat checkpoints.