DIY for replacing oil cooler?

[Howard_R]

I managed to run over some sort of plastic battery powered hand tool that I guess fell off a truck. It was in the middle of an intersection, and I didn't have enough time to avoid it. It made a pretty large bang when I hit it. It cracked my front lip, and bent my oil cooler pretty good - you can see it bent up when you look through the center lower air intake.

Insurance has said they won't cover it. So I figure I may try to replace it myself. Just wondering if anyone has tackled this repair before? Seems pretty straightforward, but would be nice to know if there are any gotchas?

I pulled over as soon as I hit the debris in case the cooler was punctured, but I guess I got lucky.

[RickFLM4]

Why won't insurance cover it under collision coverage?

[blockdoc]

https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/f...ler/1VnXwJZvua

Oil cooler is about $375 online YMMV

[SD ///M4]

I also ran over something last week but fortunately, it didn't take out the oil cooler. It did push in the right center parking sensor in the bumper cover and the right side front camera near the wheel well. I was able to jack up the car, remove the RF wheel, pull away the fender liner and put the camera back in place.

However, in order to put the right front sensor back in place I had to pull the bumper cover away far enough to reach in from the top and pop the sensor back into the hole.

To do this, I had to remove the LF wheel and remove all of the 8mm screws along the bottom edge of the bumper cover, remove the right and left under engine covers, the oil cooler cover, and drop the oil cooler, which is held in with three Torx bolts. Another reason I did this was to mount a BMW CCA grille badge on the lower grille, and dropping the oil cooler is the only way to get to it. (I wouldn't have done all this just to mount the grille badge, but since I was already in there, I decided to do it.)

EDITED TO ADD: I just clicked on the newtis link above and there was a link to everything I described above: https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/f...ler/1VnXk97bY9

I didn't pay any attention to the hose connections on the oil cooler, but getting to it was pretty straightforward, just unscrewing/unbolting and everything went back together easily. Obviously, you won't have to pull away the bumper cover, so it should be a lot easier than what I had to do.

The bad news for me is that whatever it is that I ran over scuffed up the front bumper enough that a repaint is probably needed.