Dear Experts ,

Can some body please guide me technique to open the gear lever shiny boot rim as attached in image , there must be some some way to open it , have tried a pres and life a lot from end of it as shown with arrow assuming there will be some lock at the end of boot it but no luck , don't want to break it.

Rest opening trim seems straight forward just have 3 screws not bad but gear lever boot part seems tricky. Found some information from skoda manual which seems for car which have armrest.

Any thought please .

Regrds

Dear Experts ,Had some luck with great difficult I was able to open the gear lever boot , the shiny ring has broken but usable , the lever leather is rubbing with panel and it was very difficult to open the panel. found button switch was rusted and cigarette socket connector is broken . Cigarette socket have a very small wire so please be careful , I think cigarette lighter should open outside so was central Lock/unlock button switch but was not sure and even I wanted to make sure to check connectivity of all plug/socket .

Cleaned the connector with isopropyl with qtip/tooth brush but rust have reduced but still there so decide not to use it - ordering new one from Skoda-parts.

Saw lot of white dust inside not sure what does it mean may be salt.

Plastic Body tool kit was not much useful screwdriver had helped to lift the ring .

Trying to pull the cigarette socket out of body for replacement and not easy to remove , it is slight rotating but not coming out some lock is stopping tried to pull , pressed some internal metal strips but no luck yet , don't want to break cigarette socket stopping some lock fixed panel.

Anybody have switch/connector please message me directly.

Hop it helps others. ANy more info please free to message me please.

thanks regards

I put my fingers around the leatherette and under the ring and just pull up hard, not screwed in, just agressive clips.

You can clean that up with Isopropyl Alcohol as you suggested Should work fine. But you may need to GENTLEY scuff the contacts for better contact, the rubber bobbles are tipped with conductive material and they just short out the terminals to make the conection. They also may need to be scuffed. Check accross the resistors with a meter to see if they are still the correct value. Oh, sorry you ordered a new one anyway, didn't read down far enough.

We have a special tool for removing the ciggi lighters. You can do it by carefully easing out the lock tabs.

This is the tool I use

Edited 31 May31 May by 3T51704x4

Much appreciated @3T51704x4 , Very true ring was very aggressive, also with time dust struck and makes things even harder, I had luck this morning understood the mechanism of removing cigarette holder so added some dw40 under the ring and followed this guy video step by step and magic worked, I will be ordering button from Germany ( skoda-parts) cleaned with brush and lot of 99% isopropyl alcohol but is still unable to remove 100% rust , even tried using dw40 but no luck , possibly ultrasonic cleaner can do it better , just gave up , will order new, will test it again I believe I think pressure resistance may not be as expected and because of rust so not sure if it work on every press.

Once again appreciate your time to respond , any body needs any experience about how we go ahead replacing cigarette and button switch please feel free to ping me any time.

Fabia Mk2 panels are very poor quality of cheaP plastics, mk1 have much better quality.

Thanks

kind regrds

Unfortunately things are very easy if one have knowledge about tool/technique to use it. Your video is great .

Thanks for sharing .

regrds