I've always liked the sports car office chairs but they were simply too expensive to justify buying one -- I ain't made o' money, ya know! So I decided to make my own...



I went to the Puyallup, WA, VW show and bought a used 914 seat for $20. A little Simple Green and water and she looked great. I then bought the complete seat mount/rails from the 914club.com classifieds for $35 so I could have a way to mount the seat and adjust it just like in the car. Next, I bought a used, adjustable office chair for $20 so I could use its base for mounting my seat. It had a chromed base and legs which would help make the chair look sporty. Alas, the chair base didn't drop low enough so I scrapped it and ended up using my original office chair base -- what you see in the pictures and the reason for those extra holes.



I took my time, figuring out what I could do with the scrap metal from previous projects I had in my garage. I also inspected the construction and metal thickness of the office chair, as well as placing the 914 seat in mock-up to see where it would "sit". This little bit of inspection would help me to engineer a well-built, long-lasting chair. I used metric stainless steel fasteners with Nyloc (locking) nuts. The hinges were from Home Depot and are inexpensive steel hinges that are almost the same width as the seat mount floor runner.

Next, I examined the seat height mechanisim of the 914. Simple enough. So I removed one from my 914 and made a duplicate and added two more notches for more adjustability. However, after welding everything together and putting the seat on I discovered why the original 914 seats don't have these extra "teeth": The seat bottoms-out on it! So I had to pull out my cutting wheel and slice off the two extra notches. Also, the chair mounting plate is at a slight angle and the 914 floor mount will angle the seat as well, so I made sure in my measurements that I mated the two so the angles somewhat negated themselves otherwise the 914 seat would be angled too far back.



After cutting, MIG welding and grinding I cleaned the metal, primered it, then gave it a couple coats of black epoxy paint. I let the paint dry until it was no longer tacky (yeah, yeah, I should've waited longer but I'm impatient!) and bolted it all up. Wheeled it into my study, adjusted the height and recline, and now use it daily!