What to replace child seat foot straps with?

[alicej]

I'm back on the bike after having a baby! He's 18 months and I've got a Co-Pilot Lima. Been out a couple of times, so far so good.

I feel like I need to replace the footstraps though, they're rubbish! They're a strip of velcro that's supposed to bend back on itself to close,

footstrap.jpg (6.85 KiB) Viewed 1867 times

but the kid's feet are in size infant 5.5 shoes which only just poke out of the footrests, so the strap has to go a very long way back round his foot to stick, and I can't get my (cold!) fingers far enough into the gap next to his foot to get it closed or open easily.

The seat is something like this, with three sides of the foot enclosed really so very little room to get (cold!) fingers in, and I can't see what I'm doing in there at all which makes it difficult to grab the end to undo it.

child seat.jpg (17.33 KiB) Viewed 1867 times

Is there a different design of strap I could replace these with? What are other people using with similar sized tiny feet and child seat footrests? And did I mention it's really cold?

[landsurfer]

Fabric toe straps ..... ?

[alicej]

His shoes measure about 19cm around the bit the strap would go round, if that helps - I don't think they make normal toe straps small enough!

[landsurfer]

Toe straps, well the ones i've been using for 40 years go down to zero .... from about 7 inches in diameter .....

[531colin]

You could re-site the straps to the front of the "foot recess" so they prevent his feet coming out of the front.
On the other hand, can anything bad happen if his feet DO come out of the front of the foot recess? If his feet can't get into the spokes (or the rest of the "works") it doesn't matter if they are strapped in or not?
And its cold. Kids in those seats need snow suits in July.

[nosmarbaj]

I've no direct experience of such seats, but couldn't you feed each existing strap up from below through one slot, and back down through the other, making a loop for the child's foot? Then you do the tightening and loosening underneath the footrest, where there's no space restriction.

[eileithyia]

It's hard to say, from that picture it looks like the straps are fixed to the back of the foot rest? The seat we had had some slots in it.. so i was able to thread a standard toe strap through the slots and use these to fix feet. There were times when junior still managed to get a foot out and 'scrape' the back of his welly on the footrest thus managing to get said welly off and lost along the route......!!!!!!!

Main concern is can they reach the moving parts of the bike with their foot, if not.... do not worry too much.

[AaronR]

I got some velcro tapes like the one you pictured from ebay to use for wrapping big bundles of cable, there are loads of sellers on there listing them in all sorts of lengths, so that might be a solution? I think I got somewhere in the region of 30 straps for £2

[Vorpal]

You can just get longer velcro straps, or use straps from toe clips or nylon webbing with some clips that you like better.

Here are some pictures of what I did with the ones in our CoPilot Limo. I am also posting detail so others can offer suggestions.

before => why the velcro straps are hard to dig out with a child's foot in there

before, strapped

after (toe strap)

disassembled to change from velcro to toe strap

p.s. the toe straps go as small as necessary.

[Vorpal]

And its cold. Kids in those seats need snow suits in July.

I highly recommend one of these https://www.merlincycles.com/hamax-chil ... 45221.html which also fits the CoPilot seats.

[Smiles]

I have the previous. Iteration of the same seat and stopped using the foot straps. My son didn't find them comfortable and we agreed that if he would keep his feet tucked back in the foot spaces I would not make him wear the straps. Lots of use without problems.

[alicej]

Brilliant, thank you all!

I've no experience of toe straps and the velcro ones looked like they'd be limited by where the fluffy side of the velcro stops and the hooky bit begins. But the clippy ones in Vorpal's photos look perfect, and threading them so they tighten on the outside of the footwell is genius - so much easier to stick his foot through a loop and tighten it than to fiddle with the clip each time. Yes little slots, not fixed, so could do this easily.

That'll stop him undoing them himself too. No point telling him not to. He's only a year and a half, so although he understands "foot" and "shoe", pretty much any and all requests for anything get the response "NO NO NO NO NOOO!", followed by very fierce demands for a banana. I don't think his feet can actually reach any dangerous parts of the bike, but they could probably reach some tender parts of ME . Plus yes, he would enjoy taking his shoes off and chucking them into traffic. Or into my spokes. Or under my bum. Or absolutely insisting that I need to turn around and take them off him and SAY THANK YOU, right this minute. Basically the more of him tied down the better for the time being...

[Vorpal]

Ha ha. We used to leave a trail of debris.

If there wasn't a friend following to pick up the stuff we dropped, we were sure to have to go back and get it. It once took me two hours to come back from the next village (7 miles) because I kept having to go back for a cuddly toy.

Mini V used to push on my backside when she wanted to go faster. Wanting to go faster was almost all of the time that she wasn't eating and dropping things (or wailing about dropped things).

[Smiles]

Brilliant, thank you all!

I've no experience of toe straps and the velcro ones looked like they'd be limited by where the fluffy side of the velcro stops and the hooky bit begins. But the clippy ones in Vorpal's photos look perfect, and threading them so they tighten on the outside of the footwell is genius - so much easier to stick his foot through a loop and tighten it than to fiddle with the clip each time. Yes little slots, not fixed, so could do this easily.

That'll stop him undoing them himself too. No point telling him not to. He's only a year and a half, so although he understands "foot" and "shoe", pretty much any and all requests for anything get the response "NO NO NO NO NOOO!", followed by very fierce demands for a banana. I don't think his feet can actually reach any dangerous parts of the bike, but they could probably reach some tender parts of ME . Plus yes, he would enjoy taking his shoes off and chucking them into traffic. Or into my spokes. Or under my bum. Or absolutely insisting that I need to turn around and take them off him and SAY THANK YOU, right this minute. Basically the more of him tied down the better for the time being...

Erm....I am getting a sense of your parenting style....perhaps my solution is not for you....

[alicej]

Erm....I am getting a sense of your parenting style....perhaps my solution is not for you....

Yep you lost me at "we agreed..."

Will be a different world when he has enough language to convey what's going on, what needs to happen etc. For now it's just miles of going "Look mama, a CAR!" .