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Why is my gaming chair leaning to one side? Common mistakes and quick fixes

Is your gaming chair leaning to one side? Or did you mess up assembly?

Updated: Oct 18, 2023 12:16 pm
Why is my gaming chair leaning to one side? Common mistakes and quick fixes

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You save up for a gaming chair, you finally buy it, and you wait 2-56 working days for it to arrive. You then spend an hour fumbling around as you build it because you ignored the part of the instructions that recommended 2 people.

Then you sit in the thing and it’s wonky. God damn it. So you desperately google ‘Why is my gaming chair leaning to one side?’ and you find yourself here.

Well, luckily for you, dear reader, we’ve built a lot of gaming chairs here at WePC, so we’ve made all the mistakes already. Here are the most common reasons why your gaming chair is leaning to one side.

It actually might not be leaning to one side

Despite making fun of you earlier, we frequently build chairs solo, and we’ve messed it up many times.

Often the chair looks like it’s leaning to one side, when in fact, the base is perfectly level. However, it’s very easy to mount the backrest to the base unevenly, as you have to partially screw it in on one side just to hold it steady until you get to the other side.

So, there’s a good chance you over-tightened one side, meaning that the other side couldn’t be seated (haha) fully. Remember how your dad told you to tighten the bolts in a star shape when you change a wheel to keep it even? The same rules apply here.

So, even if you’re sure you attached the backrest correctly, you lose nothing by removing it, then re-attaching it, paying particular attention to our advice.

Check the connection between the cylinder and the seat base

Most gaming chairs have you simply place the seat base and backrest section onto the cylinder, which is in turn simply placed into the wheelbase.

Because of this less-than-specific assembly process, it’s quite easy to mess it up, so, take a look at the underside of the chair and see if anything looks uneven or imbalanced.

Even if it looks ok, you can separate this section, then re-assemble it, taking particular care to do it accurately. You can typically separate the base, cylinder, and seat base by a few hits with a rubber mallet, if you find yourself woefully mallet-less, yanking the pieces apart is tiring, but does work after a while.


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