First meeting with the Zibar MK2. Personal opinion of a Russian automobile mechanic
When you call the Zibar representative office, you can hear the following: ‘Hello, we are very glad that you are using a vehicle manufactured by our company built for the Israeli army, designed to quickly arrive at the destination, fulfill the order and quickly get home’. No one answers you how to fix it and where to get spare parts. Therefore, a simple automobile mechanic from an ordinary Russian car service in the outback of Russia, who first met the Zibar MK2, rolled up his sleeves and got down to it himself, along the way finding out many interesting details about our favorite military vehicle.
We want to warn you right away that this is not a traditional review, but a collection of impressions of a Russian automobile mechanic. It does not claim to be the ultimate truth, but rather a professional look at the Zibar MK2. After all, some people use it not only in the army, but also in everyday life. We will retell you everything in detail. All the citations will be quoted.
Off we go!
As befits, the first meeting took place in a car repair shop, where the vehicle arrived for service. The story of arrival of the Israeli Zibar in Russia is a mystery shrouded in darkness. According to our protagonist, such a rare brand for Russia will remain rare, as its price tag is self-explanatory. But work is work. The client brought it, so it is required to fulfill the task. According to the Zibar owner, this vehicle has purely army roots, even the name itself has a reference to the army tradition, which is not customary to talk about, but everyone knows about it (you should ask Ido Cohen, the owner of the company producing the Zibar MK2, whether it is true or not). And you should drive it over rough terrain, mountains, stones and sands, and not along the highway. However, you can actually drive it on the highway, but it is dangerous, as it slows down badly, which is the very reason why the owner came to a Russian car repair shop.
At first, our automobile mechanic thought that the vehicle was homemade… But the numerous laser engravings on metal sheets and other stickers with the Zibar name cleared up all the doubts concerning the origins of the model. On closer examination, it became clear that the design was developed, and not ‘made as a kitchen-table effort’. Although the weld quality could be better, the painting is ‘disgusting, to be honest’, and the materials are the simplest.
Naturally, our professional automobile mechanic wanted to explore the vehicle maintainability and structural reliability. And he did it. But first, we’d like to share his impressions of ergonomics, if such a designation is even applicable to this type of vehicle. Let’s compare it with the Hummer H1. In Israel, the Zibar is sometimes called our Jewish Hummer. Although, by and large, these are completely different vehicles, which are ‘related’ exclusively by their use in the army and the use of spare parts from General Motors.
Let’s start the examination
Doors
According to the mechanic, the door is quite ordinary. It is rather a ‘gate’, ‘welded from a square pipe with a sheet screwed on with self-tapping screws from the outside’. And it can be called a door only because it gives you access to the cabin. The mechanic happily announced that ‘the basement door in the repair shop is made of the same square’. Instead of the body facing there is a thin layer of the 4 mm thick noise-insulating self-adhesive sticker, and then, he suspected that this was done by the owner. The lock or rather ‘a latch’ is a kind of symbiosis of a standard Jeep Wrangler handle and a classic house bolt. The hinges are also borrowed from the Wrangler. No locks or central locking, which is even good, as the vehicle will not suddenly slam shut, leaving the owner alone in the desert, which the same Hummer H1 likes to do.
Interior
The thing you notice is incredible spaciousness and you don’t “really want to turn into the Thumbelina”, which is not the case with the tight and not very roomy Hummer. How can fully geared-up bulky American soldiers fit there? By the way, you can actively rotate the steering wheel in the Zibar MK2 without harming the left elbow, which is what the Hummer H1 does.
Visibility
‘This is a true Russian UAZ 3151. I am sure one of the designers owned this off-road creation of our Ulyanovsk comrades or served in the Russian army’, says the mechanic. It’s funny, but this may well turn out to be true, because Vysotsky sang that “a quarter of our former people” lives in Israel. As for visibility, you need to clearly understand for what purpose you are buying the Zibar MK2. This is not a vehicle “for every day” navigation of the traffic jams and maneuvering through narrow streets. According to the designers, when driving the Zibar MK2, you only need to look forward and then only to determine the trajectory of movement. But, if we compare it with similar models, the Zibar’s visibility can be characterized as excellent.
Dashboard and seats
The dashboard is painted iron and good old analog devices, but there is no point in finding fault, as an army is an army. However, the Zibar MK2 has truly comfortable sports seats with three-point seat belts that will securely hold the driver and passengers in their seats even on rough terrain, and our ‘soldier’ can afford such a trip without any problems, unlike the ‘competitor’.
Air conditioning
‘When driving in the maximum mode, everything is covered with frost, from interior parts to the hair of everyone who is inside the vehicle, which is understandable, as Israel’s weather is notorious’, says the owner. An interesting detail: the radiator of the air conditioning system is located horizontally behind the cab. It clearly didn’t fit in the engine compartment, so it was decided to ‘resettle’ it, which, in general, is not bad at all, as it will be very difficult to damage it in the desert. Ideally, the radiator of the cooling system should also be place there, but, as our mechanic said, ‘the Israelis thought differently, and they know better’.
Interior heating
Frankly speaking, it is bad. It is clear that the climate in Israel is different, and we probably don’t really need to heat the interior. And yet, in the cold season it would not hurt… The Zibar MK2 interior is warmer than the street, but the distribution of air flows can be described as follows: “There is no air flow distribution or rather there is, but only the hapless engineer who designed this system knows where it is blowing”. It is impossible to immediately detect the place where the air flow is supplied to the glass. Moreover, the windshield fogs up, so you have to treat all the glass before the trip with an anti-fogging agent… Our mechanic noticed that the Zibar owner always has the necessary stock of special chemicals.
What does it hide inside?
Engines and chassis are reliable. There are no complaints. The vehicle is equipped with a 2500 chassis on continuous 8-pin axles, a 3-speed automatic transmission and a 6.2-liter V8 engine by GM, borrowed from the Camaro model, and not from the Hummer or Escalade. The declared maximum speed of 200 km/h is quite real, according to the owner, but stopping the Zibar MK2 after such acceleration is not an easy task, which is the very issue that made the owner come to the car repair shop. Maybe you don’t really need to slow down in the desert, but if you drive along the highway on 40-inch “rollers” (in some configurations and 43-inch ones) and on continuous bridges, it is proposed to stop this monster with absolutely usual brakes from an ordinary heavy pickup… Can you imagine that?
The braking system is frankly weak, and the owner says that the pedal is quite stiff. After the diagnosis, it became clear that, due to rare use, the guides of all the calipers were acidified. And the standard vacuum amplifier does not very effectively cope with the task at hand. Our mechanic proposed to solve the problem gradually, starting with installing SSBC vacuum pump brakes in order to reduce the effort applied to the brake pedal. Some of the caliper guides were replaced, the rest were cleaned and oiled, and the ‘glass’ was removed from the brake pads with a cutter. An additional brake booster vacuum pump was installed and the vehicle was handed over to the owner for testing. Depending on the results of which it will be clear whether a further upgrade of the brake system is required or such a minimum program is sufficient. By the way, repair kits for calipers from the Chevrolet Silverado are perfect for our Zibar.
Spare parts
The situation with the spare parts for the Zibar MK2 is ambiguous. All the parts that are used for the manufacture of the vehicle are regular parts from American cars, mainly GM models. Since the vehicle is not produced piece by piece, the same parts are used for each batch. This is where the advantages end, because no one will ever tell you what parts were used for each batch. Therefore, our mechanic decided to remove the part and look for an analogue, since all the parts are exclusively from American production cars. If you need to repair or service your Zibar MK2, we can only recommend contacting those car repair shops that are specialized in working with the vehicles from the ‘Big American Three’, as then you will not have to select the necessary spare parts for a long time, the service technicians easily ‘recognize’ the analogue and, which is important, most of the spare parts for the chassis will be 100% available.
Summary
If you want to drive the Zibar MK2 on the road, as most Hummer H1 owners do, then you won’t experience any repair problems for a long time. But if you want to use the vehicle for off-road driving or for hunting trips, you will have to think about some finishing touches, alterations, mainly for additional protection of the steering gear and steering linkage.
Our mechanic says that the reliability of the Zibar MK2 design is ‘beyond praise’. Access to almost all components and assemblies is ‘excellent’, and ‘there is no problem at all’ to repair the vehicle even in the field. In terms of the availability of spare parts, the Zibar MK2 will give odds to the Hummer H1, for which most of the running parts require at least two weeks to be delivered from the USA. Body repair can be carried out ‘even by a beginner’, as well as painting ‘can easily be done with a spray can, which, perhaps, will even surpass the quality of the factory painting’.
Final impression
The Zibar MK2 is an interesting and reliable vehicle, but it has a very narrow range of applications. However, it is very, very good in this narrow range! In everyday life, such a vehicle is more likely to create difficulties than eliminate them. But there will definitely be fans who will drive it even to the bakery!
