Leather wearing off of shifter

[tenyearguarantee]

All,

Have been absent for a while, have come back to ask a question.

I got my manual octavia back in early august/end july 2015 and have noticed the shifter knob losing some leather. Anyone else noticed this?

[Guest001]

Do you drive with your hand resting on the shifter. My ex father in law used to do that and ended up with a rash on his hand from the vibration.
Hazards of driving an LH Torana 1900 i guess LOL.

[Gerrycan]

Have you done a lot of km in town?
Our bog-standard Ambition 2014 manual (still had the leather changer though) has done 35k-ish with a fair bit of urban and that is not showing any sigh of wear.
Rough hands?

[99Reza]

Mine is quite worn out, I suspect it's all from my wife's twitchy left hand . The leather is pretty low quality, not a full grain hence once the surface is worn it doesn't 'heal' back.

[woofy]

Weird, the mk2 was pretty high quality leather and lasted us fine for 8yrs, the steering wheel leather at least seems just as good in our Mk3, haven't noticed the manual knob being any different. Our Santa Fe however has terrible steering wheel leather, it peeled and shredded from day 1.

[99Reza]

Probably Skoda just cutting cost here and there. With today's technicality know how, they can make cheap leather (bi-cast) look and feel as nice as the more expensive one (full grain) until it actually worn out. The leather on the steering wheel is great though, I can see and feel it age nicely.

[tenyearguarantee]

Do you drive with your hand resting on the shifter. My ex father in law used to do that and ended up with a rash on his hand from the vibration.
Hazards of driving an LH Torana 1900 i guess LOL.

Yeah I tend to rest my hand on the shifter. Surprised that would be enough to do it though, my hands are usually quite clean, maybe I need driving gloves...

[99Reza]

Bi-cast leather's surface is held together by glue and the sweat plus oil from our body is quite good at breaking down the sticky stuff. You will need that glove

[spud75]

I have upgraded? The shifter knob to a mk 3 on my mk2 after the silver wrap over part that sits on the top of the mk2 knob and wraps to the back of the top of the knob had a sharp edge. I got it replaced under warranty, and it was actually worse. So I sourced an OEM genuine knob from Europe. (~$90) Bit of drilling (found details on briskoda - needed a 10.5 mm bit) and I now have the better looking mk 3 knob in my mk2. The shift post on the mk3 and mk2 are quite different.

Firstly, no issues at all with leather wearing. And I rest my had on the shifter knob ALL the time. Bad habit really. Most of my km's are city driving, so it gets a bit of use. The shifter skirt on the mk 2 is leather and better quality (although very thin) than the skirt on the mk3. The mk3 skirt is only vinyl. I swapped the mk2 skirt on to the mk3 shifter knob when doing the change over. Have the best of both worlds really.

The point of this? Have had no issues with the leather wearing out, but if you are out of warranty, or Skoda wont change it over, I only paid about 90AUD for a new one.

[99Reza]

They usually use kangaroo leather for the shifter boot (skirt) due to its durability and property (very thin). My previous VW Tiguan has a roo skin as well as my C-class, seems like mk2 also used them. Definitely cost cutting going on there.

Now that you mention warranty, I'll mention this to the dealer on my next service.

[woofy]

Sure it is roo skin? I had a feeling in my Mk2 manual it was some kind of synthetic. Unless I'm thinking of the Mk3. Neither had any issues but the Mk3 is only a year old compared to to 8yr old mk2. May be the boot is different with the DSG as well. Mine are both manual.

[99Reza]

The telltale sign of it being a roo skin is very thin, quite stiff and resistant to stretching. They wouldn't use anything else for something that thin, normal leather will just stretch and rip if split into that weight. The other alternative is synthetic.

[tenyearguarantee]

Just an update, got the shifter replaced under warranty, however they got the wrong one so am getting it re-replaced next week.