Converting a 458 Speciale Seat into an Office Chair – Need Advice

do yourself a favor and save a LOT of time and BUY an office chair. Remove the store-bought office seat from the base and casters. Then fabricate a base for the 458 seat to mount to the store bought base with wheels. I did it with the bottom seat piece from a California and turned out good. I could have gone further with it, but my wife started looking into local mental facilities for me.

 

post a pic of the base of your 458 seat and i can give you some thoughts. Also, there are a lot of smart guys on this site who may chime in too. I like how mine came, it's comfortable and my kids love zooming around the garage with it.

 

A lot of companies sell office chair bases to fit their (aftermarket) seats. I've done this with a pair of OMP seats using office chair bases from OMP. I see they now even have some with arm rests built into the base. Here's a picture of the OMP bases I used.

These bases will have a metal plate that is drilled to the pattern on the bottom of the seat, which is visible once you take the seat sliders off. Most likely this will be different than the bolt pattern on the bottom of the 458 Speciale seat so you would need to make an adapter bracket.

The end result, unfortunately, wasn't very satisfying. While they look awesome, the way you sit in a car and the way you sit in an office chair really isn't the same. I found the OMP seats keep my hips way too tight to be comfortable for long periods of time at a desk. Forget about "manspreading" or shuffling around- you are locked into a single position. They are fine for sitting around BSing about cars or hanging around the garage I just wouldn't want them as a primary office chair.

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This is perfect and exactly what I am talking about. I only used the BASE of a California so it's got an open back. Kinda like a shop stool on wheels. Comfy. If your 458 seat can recline the rake manually, you should be fine. An OMP seat sounds awesome but doesn't sound too comfortable. No moving the "boys" around in that seat. Here is my crude project that I really could have done better with but for time constraints.
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I recently took on a similar project…
https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/my-new-ferrari-office-chair.696687/

I used the base from my old chair, and used a wooden base with lag bolts to attach it. I’d show more detailed pics but I am out of town at the moment. My old chair had a similar wooden base with lesser quality plywood.

 

It’s in a subscribed forum. Here’s the pic from the original post

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Yes, with a Porsche Turbo seat (right behind me as I type this). Never worked they way I wanted it to and I really should throw it out as I haven't owned a Porsche in 11 years now. Buy one already done from a real furniture maker.