I am pretty sure that if a scope has nylon internals, those parts will be more prone to contraction and expansion with temperatures. They would be more subject to wear over the long haul as well. I am not sure if Leopold high end scopes still use nylon, or if they are metal. I don't have one to look at.
As an old Pontiac man (old man who had a bunch of old Pontiacs) I can speak with authority about nylon gears, timing gears in the case of Pontiacs. Also had some fishing reels and even some electro-mechanical telephone equipment with nylon gears. Certainly there's more than one kind of nylon, but I don't want any in the turrets of my scopes, dialing scopes or not. Seems like poor economy. Lube helps, no doubt, but how much lube can you put inside a scope before it becomes an issue?
Tim O'Connor of Leupold recommended in a magazine interview that users spin the knobs around a few times to spread the internal lube, and that advice cured a fussy VX-2 3-9 for me (so far), and may have helped with the others I bought since. Still, IMO, there's no excuse for questionable materials in a quality product.
Back in the heyday of Quality programs for corporations, the mantra was "Quality means meeting customer expectations, not goodness", Sounds like that philosophy is still in play. I just wish they'd own up to the real issues people are having and make the changes needed to meet current "Customer expectations" in the current market. A return to friction knobs on set and forget scopes would suit me just fine, if they stay put.
