Britax Marathon Keeps Your Child Harnessed to 65 lbs? No Way!!! - UPDATE APRIL 2007
Written: May 09 '04 (Updated Apr 26 '07)
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Pros: Harness supposedly holds children up to 65 lbs and 49 inches (but doesn't!)
Cons: Difficult to install and use, awful user's manual, overpriced, crotch strap too short
The Bottom Line: The Safety 1st Apex is a much better seat and values than the Marathon. But if you want a Britax opt for the Regent.
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| mmcphee's Full Review: Britax Marathon Convertible Car Seat - Microdot Ta... |
My oldest daughter was outgrowing her Evenflo Triumph convertible car seat but at only 2 1/2 at the time she still need a 5-point harness. Options at that time were limited and we ended up with a Britax Marathon.
The Basics
The Britax Marathon is a convertible child safety seat that is LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tether Child Harness) equipped. The seat can be used rear facing for children 5 to 33 pounds and forward facing up to 65 pounds for children 18” – 49” inches. The Britax Marathon can be used for 6 years before it needs to be discarded, unless it has been involved in a car accident. The seat is approved for aircraft use and comes with a 1-year warranty.
The Manual
The instruction manual comes attached to the seat by short elastic. It is necessary to cut the elastic unless you are fond of reading instruction manuals with a 20 lb car seat on your lap. The manual itself is poorly laid out. Since you cannot adjust the harness height while it is installed in the car those instructions should be first in the manual, instead they are towards the end. Yes, it only means flipping through the manual to find the right page, but when I am reading a book I don’t want to search for the first chapter somewhere in the middle of the book.
I do like that the manual includes lots of color photographs for proper use as opposed to the line drawings by most other brands of car seats. I am not impressed by the written instructions themselves. While the pictures are nice I still need to read instructions to figure out all of the features of the car seat. Britax doesn’t make that easy but requiring you to flip through the manual to find information. This is definitely a manual you need to read cover to cover before using since many of the critical warnings are dispersed throughout the manual.
Installation
In the 3 years that we have owned the Marathon I have installed it in at least a dozen different vehicles, rear facing, forward facing, with LATCH, with seat belt and every time it is hard.
In only one vehicle, our 2001 Chevy Venture van, have I been able to get a good tight fit using the LATCH connectors. Although I have tried in several other vehicles, the large size of the LATCH connectors makes them difficult to tighten properly; they seem to get wedged between the car seat and the back of the vehicle seat when forward facing. I get just as good, if not a better fit using the shoulder lap belt configuration. Most people will need to go this route and some point because LATCH can only be used until 48 lbs, unless otherwise specified in your vehicle owner’s manual.
Many people herald Britax for including built-in seatbelt lock-offs on their car seats. However, if your vehicle has automatic locking belts, which most do, they are unnecessary. That is actually a good thing since those lock-offs are made of cheap plastic and are known to break easily and pop open on their own. One of ours broke off with almost no use. Due to the narrow slot for the seatbelt and the width of the seat it is much easier to feed the seatbelt from one side and have someone else there to catch it on the other.
The Marathon also features a Versa-Tether that allows you to anchor the top of your car seat to special hooks in the car. The Marathon has the most difficult tether hook to operate I have ever used; I swear mine was attached upside down by the manufacturer since I always seem to have to twist the strap it to be able to get the hook to fit into the anchor. My strap is forever getting twisted in the length adjusting mechanism, making it difficult if not impossible to loosen the tether to remove the seat. Fortunately the Marathon is usually installed in vehicles with a rear cargo area. I can unbluckle or un-LATCH the seat, flip it over the back of the seat to provide enough slack in the tether to then unbuckle that.
Another feature of the Versa-Tether is that you can tether the seat while it is rear facing - if you can find a place to hook it. I have yet to personally come across a car that has anchors installed for use with a rear facing seat. Many people do opt to use the tether rear facing by find a part of the car that they think looks sturdy enough for the purpose. As an engineer I would never try to use a piece of hardware to do something it wasn't designed to do, but that is only my personal opinion.
I always get my car seat installations inspected by a certified Child Passenger Safety Technician. When I go for my appointment I am usually confident that I have the seat installed correctly. I did not have such a feeling after I installed the Marathon in my car the first time. My instinct was correct. I had made several mistakes while installing this car seat, all of which I blame on the poor written instructions in the manual. The car seat technician who reinstalled my seat for me said that I was not the only parent who had difficulty installing the Britax Marathon properly.
Features
The difference between a $50 car seat and a $250 car seat is the features. Every car seat sold in the United States has to pass strict safety guidelines. Spending more money on a car seat does not buy you more safety it buys you more extras. So since you are plunking down your hard earned money for features you ought to know what you are getting.
Patented "Floating" HUGS System
The system amounts to rubber covers that slide up and down on the harness straps. They are designed to better distribute the forces on your child if you are in an accident. They are also supposed to reduce the chance of putting the chest clip in an improper position.
Britax likes to imply in their advertising that they invented the HUGS system to make the seat safer. Actually they were added because an earlier Britax seats FAILED the National Highway Transportation Safety Authority head excursion limits (forward movement of the head). Instead of redesigning the shell of their car seat to accommodate a wider strap Britax took the cheap and easy way out and threaded a couple of pieces of rubber over the harnesses to get the seat to pass. Is it safe? Yes, since it allowed the seat to pass all the requirements to be sold in the United States. Is it safer than anything else on the market? Nope.
On top of all that, my oldest was seemingly allergic to them and would breakout in a rash wherever her skin touched the rubber HUGS. This was really only an issue in the summer when wearing sleeveless shirts and riding for an extended period of time, but it is just one more problem I have with Britax car seats; we have the same issue with her Regent as well.
Harness Adjustment
The Britax Marathon has 4 different harness position heights. This was the first seat I owned that requires rethreading the harness to change heights. This is not something you do on a regular basis so I personally don’t find it a huge deal, but it is more time consuming than other seats we have used. However, I don’t like the fact that the seat does have to be removed to make this adjustment, because I have to install it again.
Something I was shocked to discover is that there is only ONE position for the crotch buckle. I just can’t comprehend what Britax was thinking when they put in one position to fit a 5 lb infant and a 65 lb 7 year old! The strap attaching the buckle to the car seat is very short which adds to the difficulty of getting it comfortable between my children's legs. The rather bulky round pad designed to keep the buckle off of the child’s legs is awkward to use. It gets folded in half, turned around and makes it difficult to get a good grip on the buckle. I finally got tired of it and took it off.
The Recline
The Britax Marathon has 2 different recline positions, the one used rear facing and the one used forward facing. If for some reason you decided to turn your child forward facing before they exceed the 33 lb rear facing weight limit you can keep the seat reclined while forward facing. But once a child reaches 33 lbs the seat must be put into its full upright and locked position. In its upright position I adjust the captains seats to match the natural angle of Marathon, and it is still good for forward facing snoozing.
Cleaning
The cover is washable and the only time I find I need to wash car seat covers is when a child has gotten sick in it. The last thing I want to be doing is struggling with a seat at that point. You have to uninstall and practically dismantle the entire seat to get the cover off. Once the cover is off you are supposed to hand wash it, but I have had no trouble putting it in the washer on gentle cycle, usually after spraying it off with a garden hose. Still it must be air dried, which I find takes close to 24 hours.
Securing a Child
The harness length is theoretically easy to adjust. Under a Velcro flap on the front of the seat is a lever. You lift up the lever and pull on the harness at the shoulder level to lengthen it and you pull on the end of the harness that extends beyond the lever to shorten it. Even in the rear facing position the harness adjuster is well located and easy to access. Once I have the crotch buckle settled between my daughter's legs the two clips on the harness slide into the buckle. The first clip does not lock in place until the second clip is inserted into the buckle. This is probably my biggest complaint with the Marathon. If you have a child who struggles while being put in their seat (like my son) once you finally get one buckle in you have to hold your child and the clip in place while trying to get the second clip inserted into the buckle. Good luck without some help. The chest clip is a simple male/female type clip that fit together easily.
Unfortunately now that our Marathon is installed in an outboard non-LATCH position in our van I have an incredibly difficult time adjusting the harness length. Like most car seats, the crotch pull strap is attached to the shoulder harness straps using a metal yoke. The straps and this yoke lie between the car seat shell and a plastic cover. The seat belt passes on the other side of the plastic cover closer to the back of the vehicle seat. It must be some combination of my son's size and our vehicle seat belt that regularly creates an interference between the harness straps and yoke and our vehicle seat belt. Most of the time I can poke a windshield ice scrapper in there and dislodge the interference. However, there are times I have had to uninstall the Marathon in order to get the yoke unhooked from the seat belt to properly tighten the harness. A larger plastic shield separating the belt path from the harness, such as is on the Fisher Price Safe Voyage, eliminates this annoying and potentially dangerous interference.
Final Thoughts
I divide car seat features into two categories: occasional use and daily. Overall the occasional use features on the Britax Marathon such as installation, user’s manual and harness height adjustment garner a poor rating from me. The daily features of this car seat are merely OK compared to other seats I have owned. The crotch buckle is too short and close to the back of the seat. The rubber HUGS System is a “feature” that I wish was not on the seat.
I figured even my very tall daughter would be able to use the Marathon until she was 6. At 4 1/2 she outgrew this seat. She was 45 lbs and 45" well below the 65 lb and 49" limits, but her shoulders were almost above top harness position so she no longer fit properly. I was very disappointed that the single reason I purchased the Marathon had failed me.
Even though I have other children to hand Marathon down to, it was a complete waste of money. It solved my problem of needing to keep a young but larger child in a 5-point harness, but it was only a temporary solution. If your child is ready to face forward in a car skip the Marathon and buy a Britax Regent, which I purchased for my oldest once she outgrew that Marathon. It is the seat I should have bought instead of wasting money on the Marathon for her. Another option is the Safety 1st Apex with a forward facing 5-point harness to 65 lbs and a high back booster seat with "open loop" design to 100 lbs. At less than half the cost of a Marathon the Safety 1st Apex is a great value and is working very well for my more averaged sized 3 year old.
My Other Car Seat Reviews
Safety 1st Apex 65
Graco Turbo Booster Safe Seat
Britax Regent
Evenflo Triumph
Graco Comfort Sport
Evenflo Comet Booster
Cosco Opus 35
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 224.99
Age Range of Child: Other
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mmcphee
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Member: Mary Ellen
Location: Nutmeg State
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