Road debris takes out A/C...
 

I was at our Mazda dealership on Saturday with the daily driver Subaru and decided to take an auto RX8 for the rest of the weekend to see how it compares to the 6sp. On the way back home I am on the highway when a car in front of me (he is about 75-100 yards in front...) kicks up a small piece of plastic. This thing starts to bounce around and the wind catches it so it keeps going and going, right as it is about to lay flat on the road again another gust of wind picks it up and as I try to time it so the thing goes under the car I run over it... I think I missed it and it went under the car when after 5 min the A/C stops blowing cold, right away I think "Oh, oh..." Sure enough when I park and take a look, it had entered the front bumper opening, hit the A/C condenser and took it out... The piece of plastic was sitting there at the bottom of the condensor; and let me tell you it was not very substantial. It was a thin light piece that you would never think could cause that kind of damage. Well, I was doing about 65 and if you think about what happened to the Colombia with a piece of foam and a little speed; anything can become a missile...



Moral of the story, cover-up your cooling intakes...:)

Great information Cortc!

The same thing happened to me and as much as I argued and called Mazda they told me it wasn't under my 7year warranty. My friend that manages a Honda Dealership back home even agreed with them and said it sucked but it was my bill to pay. Two weeks after I got the car and before I payed a note on it I had already paid mor ethan a note to fix a part.:(

My story was that a guy in a Civic and a guy in an F150 started to get a little unfriendly on I10. I backed off about 100 yards and the guy in the truck went about two feet offroad to throw gravel on the Civic and some of the rocks hit my condenser and punched a hole in it. Bad thing is that I didn't know at the time becuase the weather was cool and I was running the ambient air instead of the recirculating. I rode around for a month and then when it warmed up I realized I had no AC. I did make them replace the whole system though and they took it easy on the bill, it came out to only 1k.

Jeez. This is some scary stuff. How would I go about preventing this from happening in the event that debris is coming my way on the road?

I took a rock to the condenser on my Type R - and same deal, warranty wouldn't cover it. So I called my insurance company, and they weren't going to help me either, until I asked:

Q: If a rock hit my windshield, would that be covered?
A: Of course.

Q: So what altitude does the rock have to be at for the damage to be covered?
A: (Pause) That's a good point. Let me talk to my supervisor...

Ended up covered under comprehensive. Logic occasionally prevails...

I have never seen this happen before with such a small object, the RX8 has a very delicate condensor unit... I would get some strong wire mesh and cut a piece large enough to cover the unit and mount it about 1/2 inch in front of the coils... My car has the MS kit and it comes with a grill that should stop most objects...

It should just be a new condensor and a recharge...

There were lots of early threads on screening the grill openings. Here are a few:

Grill for the Bottom of the Front Bumper

Grill Mesh for Oil Cooler Protection

Protect your coolers - 3rd batch of Grill kits in production

sucks i hate trucks when they drop rocks
i cant wait to get a new front bumper i hope the grill will cover the opening good.

Retreads should be illegal
 

Ya, Me too.....they be dropping these also.....

My a/c works though :D

$631 in damages

getting new winning blue lower front airdam though :cool:

Retreads should be illegal...

Will this affect performance in anyway? Particularly regarding Hymee's? Just a dumb question.