MG ZR

hunter164 · 13-12-2011 1:17am #1

Am looking for a new car and am just wondering are the ZRs as bad, reliability wise, as everyone makes them out to be?

hunter164 · 13-12-2011 5:38pm

Anyone?

vectra · 13-12-2011 5:49pm

If it is the 1.4 you are looking at The only issue I know of is the head gasket.
Somebody (Roverjames)on here will put you in the picture.
Grand car other than that I'd say

13-12-2011 6:07pm

HG issue is well documented. In many cases it's a coolant leak from the water pump, inlet manifold gasket or rad that goes unnoticed and the car is ran on low coolant, the lightweight, alloy K doesn't take kindly to a cooking.

The gaskets can fail itself, but again, should be spotted by coolant loss, it will start off quite small and get worse.

It's a one off hit if it happens unless you are what I'd class as a negligent owner, if you don't want to perform a weekly coolant level check I wouldn't advise you buy a ZR though.

Other issues would be the r65 gearbox having a lifespan of 100,000 miles ish, when they get noisy you'll know, many don't ever though, many do.

I've had 3 cars with 4 cylinder K series engines, I put 100k miles on one of them and the first had 90k miles on it on the original HG.

The third had a leaking inlet manifold despite the previous owner having the HG "sorted" :rolleyes:

If you buy a ZR with a non whining gearbox with a coolant system and HG that's ok it should give little or no trouble.

hunter164 · 13-12-2011 7:19pm

Thank you

13-12-2011 7:23pm

....... later ones (04 and 05s) had the IB5 iirc ford derived gearbox as BMW were charging too much for R65s.

Diesel and 1.8 ZRs have the PG1 box but presumably 'tis a 1.4 you're contemplating

hunter164 · 13-12-2011 7:33pm

I was looking at the 04s/05s alright

ah i was thinking about the 1.8 but probably wouldn't afford the insurance!

13-12-2011 7:33pm

If you are buying one look for two working keyfobs and it's a plus if the EKA (emergency key access code) is supplied too, it's on a credit card sized thing with the owner's manual along with the stereo code and the code for the alloy wheel locking nut

13-12-2011 9:01pm

hunter164 wrote: »

I was looking at the 04s/05s alright ah i was thinking about the 1.8 but probably wouldn't afford the insurance!

The 1.8 ZRs had VVC too, circa 160bhp, not many of them about over here.

hunter164 · 14-12-2011 9:32pm

Thank you, gent.

MG ZR

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