The following covers the dilemma I faced with the cylinder of my office chair beginning to fail, eventual solution, and a quality of life upgrade to the wheels!
Background
I bought a Homall “S-Racer” Office Chair back around 2018, and it has served me well; transitioning over the course of the pandemic from purely Evening usage, then part-time telecommuting, and eventually full-time telecommuting.
A few months back the office chair cylinder began to fail. I would raise the chair to maximum height, sit down to begin working, and the chair would gradually (more quickly over time) begin to descend as I typed – no longer holding position. Apparently this is a fairly common problem.
After some procrastination – enabled by stealing my Wife’s office chair for a period since she prefers to telecommute at the dining table anyway – I finally opted to try and fix this issue, and at worst, buy a new chair.
Attempted Fix #1
Some brief googling showed me some rustic solutions, such as sheathing the existing cylinder with a PVC pipe to hold the chair in place at desired height. I thought a stainless steel adjustable clamp may serve in a similar manner, but while it did help a little, eventually the light grease from the cylinder had the clamp sliding down the cylinder as the chair descended.
Attempted Fix #2
Not wanting to unnecessarily spend $100-$300 on a new office chair when this one was still arguably 80% functional, I decided to give replacing the cylinder a try. To my surprise, a hopeful replacement cylinder was cheaper than I initially expected, even Prime-able from Amazon.
Resorting to some YouTube DIY on how to replace an office chair cylinder, I easily dismantled the wheel assembly and old, failing, cylinder using just a rubber mallet. Installing the new cylinder after removing the old was as simple as pushing into place.
NOTE: Do not make my rookie mistake, and ensure you remove the plastic cap on the new cylinder prior to installation, and before re-assembling everything – otherwise the cylinder will not raise and lower!
Wheels Enhancement!
Since I was in the middle of this project anyway, I opted to order some new wheels for my chair; an idea originating from a Tweet from Scott Hanselman some months back.
This swap out proved super simple, just pulling the old wheels out of assembly slot and pressing the new ones into place. These new wheels add a little extra height to the chair overall, and more smoothly glide across my chair mat and the carpet at large.
A few weeks have passed since these changes were made, and thus far height adjustments are once again holding where set!