  In canonical left-right symmetric models the lower mass bounds on the charged
gauge bosons are in the ballpark of $3-4$ TeV, resulting into much stronger
limits on the neutral gauge boson $Z_R$, making its production unreachable at
the LHC. However, if one evokes different patterns of left-right symmetry
breaking the $Z_R$ might be lighter than the $W_R^\pm$ motivating an
independent $Z_R$ collider study. In this work, we use the 8 TeV ATLAS $20.3$
fb$^{-1}$ luminosity data to derive robust bounds on the $Z_R$ mass using
dilepton data. %because they provide the most restrictive limits due to the
sizable $Z_R$-lepton couplings. We find strong lower bounds on the $Z_R$ mass
for different right-handed gauge couplings, excluding $Z_R$ masses up to $\sim
3.2$TeV. For the canonical LR model we place a lower mass bound of $\sim
2.5$TeV. Our findings are almost independent of the right-handed neutrino
masses ($\sim 2\,\%$ effect) and applicable to general left-right models.
