our Town and Country was hit just in front of the driver door.  It was hit hard by an SUV because our son was trying to turn out into a lane and so had no speed up.  The car was totalled however we had just purchased it in April (This was July) so we asked the insurance company not to total it.  I believe it is a 2002.   We had a new transmission put in and just about anything you can think of.  The frame had to be aligned...the cost was around $12,0000, which is what we paid for the car.

The air conditioner worked before the accident.  The shop doing the work had the car from July through the end of November beginning of December!  It is too long a story.  They claim to have tested everything but I am told the compressors won't go on if it is too cold.  I find it interesting that the article on this site says to run it once a month in the winter.  In fact, they had hooked a couple of electrical wires backwards and so our windshield washers were working incorrectly.  They fixed that.  Before a trip to Florida, we had a warm day and found the air didn't work at all.  We brought it in and they fixed the fans (they didn't work either) but that was not from the accident.  They tested the a/c and said they didn't think that the problem stemmed from the accident but rather was with the compressor.  It was suggested that we take the car to someone who specializes in auto a/c and if they said it IS a problem from the accident, they would go back to the insurance company and have it fixed.

What I would like to know is, how can anyone tell if the problem, whatever it is resulted from the accident or was simply something that just happened?  Is there anything specific we can look for.

Thanks,

Chris

actually its really hard to identify the cause of those kinds of auto body parts problems given your story. but in my opinion its definitely because of the accident, something must've been damaged

http://www.automedia.com/Air_Conditioning_Troubleshooting_I/ccr20020901ac/1

 If your van has not been in any other accidents, it MAY be pretty obvious if the accident caused it to quit working or not.  The A/C components are fairly large, and thus fairly easy to see.  If there is collision damage on the parts, than I think it would be pretty apparent that the collision resulted in the failure of the A/C.  If there isn't any collision damage on anything, that doesn't mean it wasn't caused by the accident, just that it might be from something harder to see, like a broken wire or sensor.  A/C systems are pretty straight forward with few components.  A good A/C shop should be able to diagnose the problem pretty quickly for you.

air conditioning article