This is my faithful old Quickie P-200. It shows the battle scars of many long hard years. Arguably one of the most dependable chairs ever made. Its biggest shortcomings are its noisy gearboxes and hospital bed looking seat. But the gearboxes are stone-cold solid and strong so they can't really be faulted. As for the seat cosmetics, well, it is real inconvenient to modify ones only means of mobility. So all serious modifications had to wait until I got a second chair.

That day finally came in the form of a shiny new Quickie S-626. But unfortunately it had serious problems in the utility/comfort and reliability areas. What I did in the utility/comfort category can be seen on this webpage. The reliability is still somewhat of an issue on the S-626. But Quickie assures me the design flaws have been fixed and new parts are on the way.

The first modification I wanted to do on the P-200 was for the same reason I got a new chair. I have Emery-Dreifuss Muscular Dystrophy and my back muscles have atrophied to the point where running over bumps and high thresholds was getting quite painful. The new chair's suspension is very cushy. In fact so plush and velvety smooth it instantly spoiled me. I HAD to put suspension on the P-200 before even thinking about seat cosmetics or looking into the noisy gearboxes. As long as this chair has been manufactured and as popular as it was in its day, surely someone somewhere makes a retrofit kit. Wrong. In fact my searching found no suspension retrofit kits for ANY chair of any manufacturer. Surely an insurance company would rather pay to add suspension to an existing chair as a persons condition worsens (as mine has) than dole out the big bucks for a whole new chair.

So… I up and made a suspension retrofit kit. The kit is specifically designed for the P-200 but with different frame mounts will fit any chair using the P-200 power module, like the P-210.

In the first photo you see the old seat frame installed on the new suspended power module. The overall dimensions of the chair are unchanged. The length, width and height are the same. The seat height is likewise the same.

In the second photo you see the power module with the seat frame removed. The existing gearboxes, wiring and control box is reused. The control box had to be repositioned above the front battery. A short, plug-in extension wire had to be used to connect the rear battery to the control box due to this repositioning.

The five position wheelbase adjustment design was retained although the shut-off micro switches beneath the large hand knobs could not be utilized due to interference with the gearbox as it rises. The hand knobs themselves were retained and the seat frame can still be removed without tools. The micro switches are taped closed and the wires wrapped around the upper shock mount tube.

Removing the rear battery in the third photo shows the upper parallel arms. A lower arm can be seen in the last photo taken looking straight down into the shock area.

Photo four is just a closer view of the area shown in photo three.

The parallel arms keep the tires vertical throughout the two inches of suspension travel. This zero camber is identical to the camber of the original rigidly mounted design. Therefore, on smooth surfaces, the new suspended P-200 handles exactly like the original…only smoother when you hit a bump!

Arm pivots are bushed and permanently lubricated.

Coil springs over oil damped shocks are used. In the photos two different brands are shown. The blue shock with the black spring is a Fox Vanilla while the red spring shock is a Rock Shox Deluxe. Both are 165mm eye to eye mountain bike shocks.