Follow Up – EWin Flash XL Series Ergonomic Computer Gaming Office Chair Repair

A year and a half ago, roughly, I received an E-Win Gaming Chair for review. Overall it’s been a damned fine chair. Adjustable and comfortable and no back problems or anything after sitting in it for eight to ten hours a day, five days a week (I try not to use my PC on weekends, to give the poor thing a break). Well, recently the gas lift cylinder (which is apparently the official term of the thing, as I just looked it up) began to fail, so randomly the chair would just sink to its lowest level. Not great for a fairly tall guy such as myself.

So in reaching out to the folks at E-Win, I asked them if they could recommend a replacement cylinder (they’re not very expensive on Amazon and other places, and I was about ready to buy one) when they offered me one in exchange for a follow-up review. Now, I don’t know if they send any owner of their chairs a new cylinder for free (I do hope so), but they offered me one, so I couldn’t say no.

I sit in this chair roughly fifty to sixty hours a week, five days a week, which is pretty punishing. However, besides this cylinder issue, I’ve had no problems with it. Again it’s comfortable and easy on the back. I also like how the armrests can be lowered for easy access to joystick and throttle. Overall, besides the cylinder issue, I’ve been pretty happy with it. I’ve no idea how quickly these cylinders go out on other chairs, but I feel like I’m pretty hard on this one, so a year and a half didn’t seem unreasonable.

I first watched this video, which the nice folks at E-Win suggested, to know what I’d be up against:

Following that video, I put my chair upside down on a stool.

This was followed by pulling on the wheeled base of the chair while hammering against the cylinder. After several blows, the wheeled base came off. I then removed the entire mechanism with the cylinder from the chair itself.

Now if you’re gonna do this, as the video suggested above, rubber gloves are a must, because these cylinders are VERY greasy. The video also suggested taping the plastic cone surrounding the cylinder together so it wouldn’t move around too much, which I did. After hammering against the base of the unit, it finally fell off, and I had a lone cylinder.

You can see the wear and rust on the thing from use. I’m not sure how the rust happened, but apparently, that’s very common. I then got out the new cylinder that E-Win sent me:

You can see how much cleaner the new cylinder is compared to the old one. I then reversed the steps and put the cylinder in the base unit, screwed it back to the chair, and then reattached the wheeled base while it was still upside down.

After making sure everything was reattached securely, I put the chair back upright and it’s been great ever since (I did this three days ago as I write this).

Overall the experience was both more and less difficult than I anticipated. It only took about an hour to do the whole operation, which wasn’t bad, but I just wasn’t prepared for how much hammering was needed to do this properly. I suggest earplugs if you do this yourself.

Overall I’m still very happy with my E-Win chair twenty months later and am glad all it took to fix my problem with a little elbow grease and a new gas lift cylinder. Thanks again to the folks at E-Win for the chair and the new cylinder. Hopefully, I won’t need one of these again for a while, but if I do, I now know exactly how to deal with it. Thanks for reading!