JMC Vigus 2015 Problems

The JMC brand is a pretty obscure one here in Australia. It launched in 2015 and was gone almost without trace by 2017 thanks to a model line-up that lacked an automatic transmission option and the resulting glacial sales rate.

In fact, a lot of Australians never even had the brand cross their radar screens, so finding out anything about the JMC ute can be tricky. But the diesel engine was actually a Ford design built under license (Ford owns a big chunk of the Chinese brand) and is actually Ford’s JX4D24 design. As such, it has a timing chain, rather than a toothed rubber timing belt. That means it should not need a chain replacement as these are designed to last the life of the engine.

Your mechanic is probably referring to the petrol-engined version of the JMC Vigus which used a Mitsubishi designed four-cylinder engine which did, as a member of the G469 family of engines, have a timing belt which would require periodic replacement.