One evening I was casually browsing salvage auction (probably hoping for some cheap newish Honda) but I came across this MG ZS EV. I know that it’s really a Chinese car (more on this later) and being quite new on 2020 plate with 34k miles I thought ‘eh, this will go for 5-6k and didn’t play with it in my mind at all. However, the next day, after showing it to my colleague Henry and seeing the price haven’t gone up much, I started to think about it more..
Having done all basic free checks (such as Car Tax Check | Free Car Check ) I couldn’t see why the bidding has not gone up. It was still sitting under 1k in the morning! And the auction supposed to end mid day. At that point I thought myself ‘well, someone will have proxy bid on it so no chance’. To make it worse my account subscription had long expired so I couldn’t check if bidding is real.
Lunch time. Our lunch time walk. I check the auction again and it’s still under 1k! No way. While others were heavily involved in chatting I pulled out my credit card and bought the subscription. That’s circa £60 gone. Still having low hopes I could afford this one. Put my phone back in the pocket and set alarm 2mins before auction end.
We did 80% of the regular walking route and my phone vibrates. Logged into account, still same bid. Nooo wayyyyy I thought. Let’s put a bid forward. I started with small, something like 1k, and got immediately outbid. What a surprise. Put another £50 on top, another £100, then seeing I am being outbid by most likely proxy bidder, it was clear it will go high as I expected. So as a last call I submitted my final bid and to my surprise I was winning the auction, with something like 30secs remaining! Now if you ever used eBay or any other auction, you know that feeling in your belly when there’s a chance to win. 30 seconds gone quick aaaaaand…. I won it! Could not believe it. First mind that came to my head – it’s a lemon (a term used by motor dealers when they buy from auction and it turns out rather bad!). But coming back to the office and sitting down for the lunch, I quickly checked parts prices and started to think that in the worst case, I could break it for parts. But that’s last resort.
So I paid for the car and delivery to my driveway. Surprisingly, it arrived only 3 days later. Transporter driver was one of a kind, manoeuvring in my tight street like a pro and even dropping the car off exactly where I needed it! So the below is the first picture of ‘at home’:
Having those 3 days while waiting for the delivery, I did some research about this model, how systems work and similar technical stuff. My biggest worry was that forklift driver (that’s how they handle cars in the auction sites) have damaged the HV battery, as it’s under the floor in the middle of the car. But I had very good visibility of the battery while the car was still on the truck. Couldn’t see anything obvious so first concern vanished.
At this point I already knew that disconnecting the Air Bag ECU would enable car to drive. When any of the air bags or seat pre-tensioners deploy, the crash data is recorded in the ECU. Because it has to communicate with VCU (vehicle control unit) it simply disables the car. Guess my next step.
Here comes the Saturday and I’m all excited about making the car ‘run’. I did try to search for MG EPC (EPC – electronic parts catalogue) so I could get the idea how to take panels apart, but couldn’t find any (let me know if you have one!). So the theory of ‘unplug two connector and car will run’ turned out to 4 hour ‘find the hidden fixings’ exercise.
Have to say the layout and assembly is rather strange. To remove the centre panel (armrest) you have to remove dashboard lower part. Which looked a bit too much. Surely could have been designed simpler.. But hey, I found the ECU module and unplugged it. With half shaking hands I press the START button, foot on the brake and…. voila! It actually drove! And there was no bad sounds at all. Well, at least at 2mph.
I haven’t photographed much of the interior disassembly but from memory I had to remove:
Centre console (think 3 screws each side, then 1 or 2 from the top)
Lower dash panel and surrounding trims (can’t remember number of fixings)
Airbag ECU (3 screws)
Some vents and stereo unit (all clips, first remove corner vent but be aware one of them is secured with screw, will update the post when I get back to the interior)
Talking about the interior, the front air bags have deployed. Only later I noticed that all four belt pretensioners also deployed. Which made me think – how come?
In regular car there are switches in the seats, so the ECU knows when passenger is present and does not deploy airbag or pretensioner if there’s nobody there. Makes sense, right? Not with the MG. Four belts (rear middle one is non-pretensioned) have pretensioners and three of them have been very stiff in what you would expect normal, unused state (belt by the pillar or resting on the seat shoulder). But they were all stiff. That means, they have deployed when not in use. Oh, and they vary around £80 per belt. Thanks MG!
So finding this, I ordered new belts from my local MG dealer. Surprisingly, they were very helpful and proactive in helping me to find what I need and getting the parts within 5 working days or less. Big thumbs up for James from Glyn Hopin MK.
Oh, in the process of replacing the belts, I came to realise how cheap are the plastic panels. The clips that fit into the holes (normally in the metal panel) had tendency to stay there, while breaking of the actual plastic bit from the panel itself. That’s cheap. Very cheap. But replacement parts are very, very cheap too. Is this good outcome? I’d say no. We filling land with broken plastic which is probably not recyclable..
While waiting for parts I started to repair front of the car, which in the auction pictures could make you think that it’s really bad crash:
However, the reality is that everything is so thin and cheap, it breaks so easily. You can just about see the front reinforcement bar which is really not crushed much. I did thorough inspection and found that radiator pack (entire front panel with radiators, fan, AC stuff) was around 1 inch away from the electric motor and motor controller. That was a relief! It means there should be no damage to the powertrain parts at all.
I took every single part of the front assembly off and that’s how it looked:
Sharp eye will see that left longitudinal beam cap is slightly bent – that is pretty much the damage I could find! It was rather great news. Maybe at this point I should point out that I have received HV training and have unplugged maintenance connector which breaks contactors circuit. I also checked for voltage between various points. Luckily it was all zero..
After spending good half hour inspecting parts I found one coolant pump casing slightly damaged. It is so minimal I could probably have fixed it but I eBay’d part number and bought replacement for £40. That’s not bad! Always search by part number, will save a lot!
So I made a list of parts that I need to order and went to MG. Got the quote and compared to eBay (ha ha, yes, I’m cheap skates). I found that in most cases, dealer was actually cheaper than eBay, sometimes cheaper than used parts! Car breakers probably haven’t caught up with Chinese brands yet.
One part that delayed the assembly of the front was the radiator holder. It is composite frame that holds most of the cooling/AC bits and also is part of the front structure. I ordered one from eBay which had some inserts missing. After going back and forth with the seller it turns out they don’t have the correct one, and the one they have sent is for petrol version. So had to send it back and ordered correct one from MG which looks like this:
See the two inserts below the bonnet catch? They are meant for charging port bracket. Also, the diagonal parts have lots of holes for the harnesses. This is what mk1 ZS EV should have fitted. The facelift version has different holder because the charging port is on the side, rather than in the middle.
The other culprit was the radar – it is for lane assist, traffic follow and emergency braking (I believe?). The bracket for the radar was totally destroyed but the radar seems to be OK (will test later). But MG would not sell bracket on it’s own, and the assembly is around £300. Nah I said. Went on to google. Few minutes later I uncovered that this radar is fitted to most of the same year cars, even German models. Baaaack to eBay and I found some for £20! But because I had plenty of time I bought it from Aliexpress for…… £6 including shipping and tax. So I bought two, just in case. It arrived and have to say, pretty decent part! It did fit well and came with the fixings – amazing China!
When I was fitting the radar, I noticed that the connector housing was cracked. It probably works fine, but being me, I take no risks and since it’s an easy job, I just replaced with the new housing. The connector MPN is 1-1534229-1 and below picture of the process of one wire out, one wire in:
There was some other things along the way, for example, I found that radiator fan was the same as on MG3, which was half the price of ZS model, and that some parts of the front bumper are the same between petrol and EV versions. But one of the biggest saves was the headlamps. They are over £400 per side. And I had two broken ones. But they were broken in a helpful way – the actual glass was intact. Or should I say plastic.. After receiving advice from my another colleague Jamie, I bought some really strong (if not strongest) glue, called DP 490. As I decided to have a go at repairing the headlights I also purchased this hot staple tool ( Hot Stapler Handle Plastic Welder Car Bumper Repair Kit with 200 Staples UK Plug | eBay ):
This was just under £13 and oh dear, why I did not had it before?! It even allowed me to fix holder that had some material missing!:
This was a massive money-saver. And yes, I did trim the staples afterwards and grind them down with the Dremel. I honestly could not believe how well it came out, and when I tried to fit them to the car, it was only a 1-2mm out! What a result! Really proud of this.
Because of recent cold (which I complained about in the previous post) I wasn’t able to do much on this car. I did buy bonnet (second hand, damaged, red) which was £150 versus £550+ brand new so trying to put it all together. There’s few little areas that require painting, including one trim at the top of the grill, which prevents from assembling the bumper on to the car, but I did try to fit it today and all seems to be OK (I took the picture when I was removing it, I did had it fully on!):
So the plan for the long Easter weekend is to paint whatever is needing to be painted and hopefully complete the front end. Then it will be the interior job – still have the dashboard and steering wheel airbags to replace, fix or replace dashboard, and then the ECU crash data delete. But more about this in the next post.
Oh, if you got this far, I have fair bit of ‘dealer only’ documents which I will upload here later on. It helped me a lot and I hope it will you too! Find them here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qMzqLItdfGVHbH65cNNj8QkYDfyK1KFj?usp=sharing
By the way – I gave it name of ‘plastic pearl’ because it is blue like a pearl, but cheap like a plastic! I do like it though, especially for the price I have paid!
Thanks for reading and goodnight!