[adilakif]

Pictures:

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I am on a road trip. An object flew under the car in front. I didn't have any time to react. If I had hit the object when it was still in the air I wouldn't be here today.It ripped thorough the bumper and got stock damaging the radiator. Is this the radiator for engine?


This happened yesterday. Outside was cold. I am on a road trip. I drove 4 more hours after this accident. I will check the car after I post this.


Completely irrelevant to this: An hour before this accident, AC stopped working. Outside is cold bu it's sunny, which makes the inside hot. For the first 3 hours of the trip AC was fine. And it stopped blowing even tho it makes the full fan noise. If I turn the AC off and run just the fans it starts blowing again. I am the second owner. I never used the AC this long before. I never had issues before this. I own the car for 7 years now.

2013 328i xDrive 52k miles. I am in the US.

[Billfitz]

The coils at the bottom are the turbo intercooler.

[Livetodrive]

As far as the a/c is concerned, you probably experienced freeze-up of the evaporator coil, which blocks the air flow. After it is left off for awhile the ice melts and air flow can resume. There was a technical service bulletin for this issue for my 2016. It involved reprogramming to prevent the evaporator from getting too cold. There also may be a hardware fix. Check with the dealer.

[adilakif]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

The coils at the bottom are the turbo intercooler.

So it's not for AC? Does Turbo need cooling, too? How do I know if the Turbo is OK?

[im_an_alien]

Originally Posted by adilakif

So it's not for AC? Does Turbo need cooling, too? How do I know if the Turbo is OK?

The intercooler is for the air that comes out of the turbo. Nothing to do with the AC. The turbo is cooled by the coolant that cools the rest of the engine. And if your turbo is not ok you will know it.

[thatgarrett]

Oh yeah, that looks fine. I was driving on the interstate back in December and a truck in front of me ejected a spare tire out of their bed and I ran over it because I had no other choice and traffic was dense and moving pretty quick, it actually busted one of the plastic mounts that held the intercooler (what is dented) in and I had to replace just the bracket, the underbody tray, and a few plastic bits on the bumper. If everything feels solid and you can’t pull one side up and down or front to back looks like it should be fine. You’d know you’d have a boost leak if your intercooler was leaking, you’d be way down on power, like really down. If you wanted to be super sure you could log your boost pressure with an app and compare to what you should be targeting based on baselines but that doesn’t look too bad at all. Sorry for the poor luck but glad everyone is ok and it just looks cosmetic

[thatgarrett]

Looking closer, it even looks like it missed the finished part of the bumper and just hit that matte plastic part, if you pull the bumper it pops off with a few clips and you can swap a new one on, if you’re handy I doubt it would be much more than $100 because I replaced the same part (but had more parts to replace that drove up my cost, still less than $500 in parts)

[Billfitz]

Originally Posted by adilakif

So it's not for AC? Does Turbo need cooling, too?

https://aet-turbos.co.uk/turbo-tech-...-does-it-work/

[ashkanvafaee2]

AC Fix: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/20...47832-9999.pdf