Mg zs 115.

[Rackers]

I'm looking to go from my MG ZR 105 to a ZS. What if anything, is there to know about the diesel engines? I'm getting a little bit fed up of my petrol as it has had problems which are sorted now but I worry about it too much!

Just wondering if the regulars could gimme some info on them, what regular problems there are, what I should be checking etc?

Cheers!

[vinny1979]

diesels are pretty awesome and nippy, a litle noisy but who cares!

[afcbadam]

peterzs has a stunning mg zs td. talk to him about it. i think hes running around the 140-150 bhp mark and from what i know of the car he has had no problems atall.

[vinny1979]

YEAH , you can crank uo fuelling and boost as they are mechanical fuelling right? like the 306 td. Animals

[peterzs]

I'm looking to go from my MG ZR 105 to a ZS. What if anything, is there to know about the diesel engines? I'm getting a little bit fed up of my petrol as it has had problems which are sorted now but I worry about it too much!

Just wondering if the regulars could gimme some info on them, what regular problems there are, what I should be checking etc?

Cheers!

I'm going up to Santa Pod tomorrow, if I can find it, and hope to have a run or two, if the figures look ok I will post up, if it all goes horrible wrong you will never hear from me again.

My TD goes well and it went round Brands Hatch with the other ZS's the other day and I only had to get out of Stamford and Murrays way ( one tuned and one running nitros). You get cheap Road Fund Tax £120 They are a bit noisy but thats on the outside, when your driving its quite, I've had a de-cat, powerflow ss from de-cat to back box and a remap, BMC filter. Plus a Roverron MAF box.

Trouble is the extra power is at a cost, checked mpg the other day and it was down to 34.4.

Still that was after using the extra power and found that I had overfulled it by putting the MAF thingy up too high, turned it down to 33% and will re check.

I did have all the belts, fluids, disks and pads sorted as you never know how its been looked after before you buy it.

In my opinion they are great cars, the engine is a L series, not modern like the BMW diesel, but has been around a few years without any major problems.

The car alarm was my only problem and this was a soggy sender unit that can be sorted by following the help on the forum.:clap2::clap2::clap2:

[Rackers]

Sounds good then, just have to find one close to me in decent nick! Hope to hear from you :p.

Thanks!

[peterzs]

Sounds good then, just have to find one close to me in decent nick! Hope to hear from you :p.

Thanks!

They do seem to be holding their price against petrol versions, check that belts have been done if required, as they can be a bit pricey to do, if nothing else you can use it as a bargaining point. Hope you get a good one.

peter :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[p_b82]

In terms of things to look out for, as Peter mentioned the MAF goes - so a MAFAM from Ron is almost a must. (although i have disconencted mine as my injectors were overfueling pre boost with it plugged in)

Other thigns to look out for are the Intercooler hoses weeping and eventually splitting - very common. they are £35+vat for a top hose from xpart.

Another issue is theEGR can get gummed up and stop working properly. They can be cleaned and re-assembled or blanked off on a Mk1 car. the 2004 have to have it removed from the ECU MAP (you can tell it never to run so therefore it does not mind if it is banled off) if you dont you wioll get the MIL light on.

Peter has done pretty much all you can do -tho a remap and\or fitting some SDI injectors could give a bit more power. Although you have top be careful as much more starts to generate too much torque for the clutch&gearbox....

The oil cooler pipes are also prone to corrode, so take a quick look at them if you can - not hugely expensive job to get changed.

Funal thing that effects all ZS's is the Ac pipes can rub and split...

The L-series if looked after is pretty bullet proof, and for aabout £500 you can get some nice minor alterations to it to get about 140-150bhp. If you want more it gets costly...

HTH

[peterzs]

Sounds good then, just have to find one close to me in decent nick! Hope to hear from you :p.

Thanks!

Just got back from Santa Pod, cold but fun, snow stopped play for an hour, but then the sun came out as most had gone home you didny have to wait long. Had about 6 runs and then thought of the clutch.

Results of the best run
Reaction ---.7793
60 ft--------2.9211
330ft--------7.6743
1/8 ET-------11.4902
1/8 MPH-----64.60
1000ft-------14.7112
1/4----------17.5565
1/4-------81.21

Whatever all that means, I know it was my first time there and getting the start right was the hardest as you just sit there and spin up the wheels. Sorry I can not compare it to a 180 but they all chickened out. What can you say.

Saw Chris180 up there and had a laugh, lots of high tuned cars though all taking it very serious

You have to allow a few bonus points seeing I,m a granddad and nearly one of them:laugh::laugh::laugh::oldtimer:

Good value £10 to get in and then£25 for as many goes as you can get in. Have it throughout the year.

[vinny1979]

pretty good mate. Used to run pod 15.9 in my metro gti 1.4 16v, little flying machine

[peterzs]

pretty good mate. Used to run pod 15.9 in my metro gti 1.4 16v, little flying machine

The funny thing is that it seems much quicker on the road, I don't know if the start slows everything down and when its moving the torque kicks it along.:mml::mml::mml:

[p_b82]

all due to the way that the torque is delivered.. and diesel will almost always loose out on a 1\4 mile as we need more gearchanges :(

as a quick question what RPM were you changing at?

I am not sure whether this show the results properly - but this is a plot from a RR i had last year - pretty much the same mods as yours, boost increase, full exhaust, cone filter and MAFAM on the 115 standard MAP. (I have been led to belive also that this is about 6-7% optermistic as a later RR on a set that i believe is more accurate returned 125bhp and 192lbs-ft

Anyhoo, back to the point i was trying to make, as you can see from the torque curve you want to be changing when you have to to make use of the peak torque at just below 2000rpm. Yes there is the debate as t wether more torque or the gearing is beneficial, but as we have to change either way at least 4 times if you start in first you may as well make sure that it is right.

I am really gutted i have unfortunately missed every POD meet that has been done o nthe forums for one reason or another, so never been able to find out what the best things are...

ps sorry for off topic lol

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/pretty_bird/scan001001.gif

[mattie007]

Saw your car again yesterday, minus many engine parts!
Looks like our cars are sharing a shed for a while!

[peterzs]

To be honest I was just hanging on and changing when I could, it did hit the limiter once or twice. I did think that around 2500 would be ideal but it would have been nearer 4000-4500. Specially 1st to 2nd!!!

The car now seems to pull right up to the limiter, where before it used to fade away at higher revs.

They run RW YB all through the year so would be interesting to have another go when its a bit warmer.

I'm going to put in on a RR shortly so will post up the results.

Again sorry if a bit of topic but its still about TD. :wave::wave::wave:

[p_b82]

I know poor thing - if it was not 2hr to get there i would pop up and go see it.

need to follow up with Matt, but i think we are waiting for the head studs so that matt can take the head off to be machined to the wire and groove can be all done, then put back together

At least it is has some company now so wont feel like its the ugly duckling sat there without a head! :D

I popped these in clicky tags as they are quite large, but that is the state of it when Matt took it apart!

hmm that picture in my head is not quite right now lool

poorly1 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/pretty_bird/P6270034.jpg)
poorly2 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/pretty_bird/P6270035.jpg)
poorly3 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/pretty_bird/P6270036.jpg)
poorly4 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/pretty_bird/P6270037.jpg)
poorly5 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/pretty_bird/P6270039.jpg)

[p_b82]

To be honest I was just hanging on and changing when I could, it did hit the limiter once or twice. I did think that around 2500 would be ideal but it would have been nearer 4000-4500. Specially 1st to 2nd!!!

The car now seems to pull right up to the limiter, where before it used to fade away at higher revs.

They run RW YB all through the year so would be interesting to have another go when its a bit warmer.

I'm going to put in on a RR shortly so will post up the results.

Again sorry if a bit of topic but its still about TD. :wave::wave::wave:

sounds good, the power does drop off after 4000, and if my memory is correct a 4000rpm shift will be about 2500 in the next gear.

I will have to work out what will be best later on when the car is back as the torque curve will hopefully be a lot flatter so just need to worry about 4000rpm barrier really...

[peterzs]

You said the damage was over fuelling but was that the remap, or did you put in SDI injectors??? Or both!!!:wave::wave::wave:

[p_b82]

I went one step above that!

I put a set of 'wingy' injectors in it that flow so much fuel (but with poor atomisation) that on the standard map and the hybrid turbo only at 22PSI (3PSI over max stock, it is good up to about 28, but not sure of the other parts lol)
i got 160bhp on an aborted power run (stopped at 3k rpm iirc)

the remap i have had was to take fuel out, not add more!

so basically the injectors are ~180bar break pressure, the SDI's are 200 and the ZS ones are 210 - becuase it was a case of more fuel across the whole rev range, i needed to get some (read a lot) taken out when the standard map was used.

It has also transpired that that while the extra fuel created the heat to weaken things the damage has been done by the remap guy advancing the timing a touch.

The way that our fuel pump delivers the fuel is much more than the SDI engine, and they run much more advanced timing - however in our cars that caused the cylinder pressures to go up too much, and the head lifted - hence the damage and the HGF you can see in the pics.

if you dont use full throttle then the head did not lift and no more coolant loss - but the damage has been done.

I am a guniea pig in how to fix the problem, with the help of matt that is - the other route is to get a decompression plate made up to lower the compression ratio from the rather high 19.5:1 down to somewhere near 18:1. this would mean much lower cylinder pressures, but at the cost of fuel combustion in the cylinder. the downside is it requires a fair bit of remap work to adjust for this. Hence why i am tying an alternate method.

If you get SDI injectors and a remap from some-one that is not aware of the problems then you may be hit the same issues if the remap is too aggressive - we have seen it on .org

The remap guy has stuck his hand up and realised his 'mistake' he basically missed the much higher compression ratio in our cars compared to the other vp30 cars (vag group) and so this is is coupled with higher boost pressure just prooved to be too much if you try for more than about 150bhp and 250lbs-ft.

a remap alone will not cause the damage you can see, but if the re-mapper asks too much of the fuel pump it can lead to premature failure. about 130-140 but not sure torque values) is what you could expect from a remap alone.
the SDI's on there own will give you the same figures roughly.. but without a mild remap can be a touch smokey pre boost and right up top 3500+rpm.

The injectors i am using 'require' a bigger or hybrid turbo, uprated clutch&gearbox, Remap and preferably an FMIC to get smoke levels (and therefore EGT and cylinder pressures) down to sustainable levels. because my clutch hydraulics originally failed, and the FMIC was not\is not fitted the remap wasn't completed so i was still driving it will too much fuel - hence the issues.

I hope that makes a bit of sense... had a phone call half way through and lost my train of thought lol

[peterzs]

Yes thanks, I'll stick with what I've got as it drives well. Best of luck with the rebuild.:wave::wave::wave:

[mattie007]

He did mention about waiting for a part from the USA!
Sounds like quite a project, 450 torques! :yikes:

[p_b82]

yeah it is about 450NM or 300-325lbsft in old money all told is the theoretical level that we might reach - possibly a touch more as the guy doing the remaps has learnt a few things since the last L-series was modded this high. (although i just found out today it is being stripped and sold :()

Whether i lower to the top figure to try to save the head is a decision i am going to have a tough time deciding on. Im mean what use is all the torque if it means that the car is off the road more than it is on the road!

Still ideally would love to see if we can break the 200bhp barrier just because we can ;)

but yes missing the car like hell, and waiting for ARP to provide us with some head studs is holding us up, although it should mean that the FMIC can go on at the same time as the other company has a new batch of cores in finally :)