How can I repair the gas lift on my chair

Question

The chair is a decade old but still very good, except the gas lift is no longer operational.

The supplier is no longer around. Is there some way I can fix this?

Answer 1

The lift cylinders are actually pretty standard. Plenty of places make them and they don't, at least in my experience, have to match the brand of the chair. I am pretty sure most chair manufacturers concentrate on style, fabric, etc. and they buy the lift cylinders off the shelf. The only difference is that you will buy yours one at a time on Amazon (or similar) and they buy them by the container load.

All you have to match is the dimensions. For example, I measured my broken chair and bought one of these from Amazon:

and it was easy to install and more than a year later is still working fine. As I understand it, the weight specification (in this example 450 lbs.) should be at least enough for the heaviest person using the chair. (In my house that's more than double what is needed, fortunately. But it is like using a 200A panel for a 100A feed - nothing wrong with that.)

Answer 2

Use a Jubilee clip around the 'silver' stem. This will stop the stem lowering too far. The springy suspension is gone but it's that or money and special tools. NB 'proper' Jubilee Clips have the threads milled-out of the strap but NOT all the way through. I wouldn't trust the sort you can see through.

I thought a rubber sleeve inside the metal clip would give more grip but it was worse than useless. Now mine is metal to metal and works fine.

Do not drill through the ram in order to put a bolt through. This might seem like a simple solution but it's pressurised and will ruin your day.