How I eliminated almost all spring noise and sticking from a refurbished Steelcase Leap V2 (Very difficult)
I bought a refurbished steelcase leap v2 with some spring noise and sticking when reclining, I'm sure people reading r slash officechairs know about this issue. I was able to fix basically all noise and sticking from the chair now over about a month when I had free time. The quick fixes in the TLDR without fully disassembling would probably only take a few minutes.
I first tried typical fixes by removing the seat and using silicone lubricant. This didn't work and made the noise and sticking worse. There are youtube videos by crandall office on this
There are two main sources of noise on this chair, one being the plastic rails, and one being the interior spring mechanism with the highly compressed spring
The solution is to use the lucas oil white lithium grease and any spray type white lithium grease
(links removed) Lucas-Oil-8-oz-Lithium-Grease-in-White
WD-40-SPECIALIST-10-oz-White-Lithium-Grease-Long-Lasting-Grease-Spray
I tried applying this to just the exposed parts of the plastic rail without fully disassembling everything, but possibly because of the mixture of silicone oil I mistakenly used previously and white lithium, this made the chair smoother but it started squeaking loudly
The fix for this was to completely disassemble the chair like in this post look up steelcase_leap_chair_diy_repair_and_disassembly on this subreddit (Make sure to read the full imgur guide and reddit post before doing anything) This is for the v1 but the v2 was about the same
>Important - if you remove the two bolts that hold on the sliding panel like in the guide it is extremely difficult to put them back on, I left a few comments on the post about how I did it. I did it twice by myself so it could be a reliable method depending on the chair. I really do not recommend doing this if you are not willing to spend a ton of time and effort, I would estimate a 30% chance that if you do this you will not be able to reassemble the chair back together again at all and will be left with an unusable chair. Pay attention to any warnings in the guide since there is a high chance of injuring yourself as well. It took me about 2 hours.
After doing this I removed all 4 plastic rails and washed off all remaining lubricant with dish soap and then applied a coating of the lucas oil white lithium grease, this worked really well and the sliding motion is smooth and quiet now.
The interior spring mechanism with the long metal bar and the huge spring can be lubricated with a white lithium grease spray to stop noises from here, mine now has very little noise but I do hear it at times possibly due to having both silicone spray I mistakenly used at the beginning and white lithium spray
Silicone spray and other thinner lubricants perform poorly under pressure and tend to stick and make noise under high pressure, so white lithium would be the only lubricant that works. White lithium is technically bad on plastic but it seems fine with the plastic steelcase uses.
The piston mechanism wasn't that smooth on my chair so some grease such as this one worked well, this easy to fix. (link removed) Super-Lube-3-oz-Tube-Synthetic-Grease-with-Syncolon-PTFE-
TLDR is to use white lithium grease and not any other type of lubricant, do not use silicone lubricant.
- For sticking on the plastic rail sliding part, follow a video to remove the seat and add some lucas oil white lithium grease to the accessible parts of the plastic rail
>If this doesn't work you will need to fully disassemble the chair, which I don't recommend
- For creaking or noises that sound like they're coming spring part of the chair, flip the chair upside down and use a white lithium grease spray with the straw to spray any moving parts through the long slit in the metal housing. The spring mechanism can be seen in the imgur album from the other post and by using a flashlight through the small slit.
>The mechanism is a big spring that is heavily compressed along with a metal arm on a pivot that converts the horizontal spring compression into a sliding motion to provide resistance to the sliding metal panel. I lubricated both sides of the spring, the pivot, and the part where the metal arm contacts the upper sliding panel.
- This will likely work, but fully disassembling the panel will give you better access, probably don't do this though
After doing any lubrication move the chair back and forth through the full range of motion and different tension levels
The automod kept removing my post for having links and I can't find what links are banned so I removed all links from my post, hopefully you can find by searching
Edit: View the patent here to see really clear and detailed images of the spring mechanism https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030193227A1/en
Try not to get lubricant on the lopsided gear thing that does the adjustable back stop, it might cause it to slip at the second to last point