Update: I didn't document my swap to a Mk8 steering wheel with the capacitive ("touch") controls, but I did that not too long after getting my heated SW up and running. That required going to a new (Mk8) gateway - which requires some ODIS magic which I farm out to friends in far-off places (Finland in this case). I liked the look and touch buttons are the new "newness", so why not - oh so cool!
Fast-forward to March 2024, and you know what....as much as I was open-minded about the touch controls, I just never got used to them; literally every simple things from adjusting follow distance to volume to FFWD/REW had me looking down at my fingers just to make sure I was in the right place. And when I didn't....I invariably missed what my brain-finger connection was aiming for.
Soooo.....tl;dr:
The "too long" section:
I figured all I really needed was the bezel and push-buttons, right? Found a seller in Latvia - $120 shipped to me in Canada. Awesome!
Arrives in a couple weeks, but when I go to install it on my existing wheel, the "locking" pins on the bezel don't align with the holes in the steering wheel. And as you can tell from the two photos above, there's a cut-out for the volume and "channel" buttons on the lower part of the button arrays such that there's no way the capacitive button bezel will work with those physical buttons.
So much for that.
But now (granted, this is part of my pathology) I have it in my head that I "need" those physical buttons, so I keep trolling eBay and eventually find a full steering wheel, with heat, WITH the physical buttons (seems like a somewhat rare combo due to heat being a seemingly high-trim feature, while push-buttons are not). Somewhat rough shape with a few little nicks and abrasions, but... all the "new"-new ones are like $500+, I ask my wallet to go to the well for me one more time and I order up the steering wheel - $250 shipped.
Once it arrives, it installs just fine, but then I decide, you know what - I want that brand new bezel and brand new buttons I'd previously purchased on this wheel, so I pull off the bezel/buttons and go to install the shiny new ones and.....they don't fit.....in the same way that bezel doesn't fit into my original touch-button steering wheel.
Soooo.....off comes that slightly used/abused steering wheel, on goes my original touch-button steering wheel (still in pristine condition, and with the perforated leather at 9 and 3), and the bezel / push buttons from the used / abused steering wheel.
I did try to swap just the buttons from NEW to USED bezel, and while they fit, the connector from my airbag to the steering wheel is six-pin, while the those NEW buttons have a five-pin connector.
There's one quick tell (best I could find) to tell if your bezel will fit - or at least to distinguish between the two bezels without actually test-fitting:
On the backside of the bezel, near the base, where the removable logo plate sits....right about here:
The pin there on my original touch wheel's bezel and the USED one I purchased, that is almost parallel with a slot for the removable logo plate/insert (right); whereas the NEW push-button bezel I received has that pin diagonally adjacent to that slot (left).
Of course, YMMV, but at least that's a quick way to distinguish between two things that definitely will not fit. Mk8 bezels are ridiculously easy to remove (compared to Mk7 anyway), so if you're thinking of going this route, check what you have and check what you're buying.
