BMW 5 Series Touring E61 - air con failure due to stone damage

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Fri 1 May 2015 11:30
BMW 5 Series Touring E61 - air con failure due to stone damage - JGreen

My air con has failed due to stone damage leading to a repair bill of just shy of £800. Since the failure is due to stone damage surely this a design fault due to insufficient shielding.

Is BMW liable due to design failure for any of the repair bill?

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Fri 1 May 2015 11:46
BMW 5 Series Touring E61 - air con failure due to stone damage - RobJP

Well, BMW replaced the E61 with the F11 5 series in 2010. So that means it has taken at least 5 years for the 'design fault' to become apparent on your car - and that's if your car was one of the last ones off the producation line. The E61 was introduced in 2004, so it's entirely possible that your car is anything up to 11 years old.

If it takes that long for a part to fail, then it's done pretty well for a 'design fault'.

If it was a design fault, then I'd expect BMW owners forums to be full of threads regarding this same issue, with lots of people writing to them regarding the same failure. If those threads aren't there, then the 'design fault' doesn't really exist. Are those threads there ?

After all, the 5 series isn't exactly rare on the roads.

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Fri 1 May 2015 12:07
BMW 5 Series Touring E61 - air con failure due to stone damage - Chris M

If it was the condenser that was damaged then that is a fairly common failure on a lot of cars. It's made of relatively thin aluminium (so it conducts heat quickly) and is positioned in front of the radiator so it gets first dibs at the cool incoming air. If a grill was placed in front of it to protect it from small stones, I'd guess its' efficiency would suffer.

£800 seems expensive, although I admit to not knowing what needs removing to get at the condenser on your car. Was that a main dealer price? Say £200 for a decent make condenser (could be more or less depending on model), £50 for the recharge, a couple of hours labour by indy air con man. £800 seems expensive, unless it's a PITA job.

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Fri 1 May 2015 15:50
BMW 5 Series Touring E61 - air con failure due to stone damage - elekie&a/c doctor
I have been in the automotive air con industry for over 40 years and the number of aircon condensers that have genuinely been stone damaged I can count on one hand.They are very robust to impact damage,however the quality of material is poor and very susceptible to corrosion.I think an Indy ac specialist would have done this for around half this price.
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Sun 3 May 2015 19:27
BMW 5 Series Touring E61 - air con failure due to stone damage - Steveieb

Thats right I used a firm called Cooltek in Daventry and they did the job for around £300 all in. They souced the part from Gand swedish for around £90.

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Mon 4 May 2015 16:28
BMW 5 Series Touring E61 - air con failure due to stone damage - madf

The original Audi A4s suffered from condenser failure due to poor QC in manufacture. Audi replaced mine FOC under used car warranty on a 4 year old car.

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