I've had my '86 300E for a little over a year and about 20K miles. During this time the A/C has worked flawlessly. One of the service receipts from the PO showed that the dealership had to add .1 lb of R12 in April of 2002 during a routine A/C service. PO said that he's never had any problem with it either. On June 3, I was rear-ended while stopped in traffic. The impact was forceful enough to shove me forward probably 8-10 ft. Surprisingly, there was no external damage visible other than scuff marks on the rear bumper cover. The other car hit me dead-on square, so the impact force was spread pretty evenly. There's a tiny buckle at the left-rear corner of the spare tire well inside the trunk. However, the impact was hard enough to rip the front flex disk, making the car undriveable. It was in the shop, waiting for the insurance adjuster and repairs for almost 3 weeks. After I got it back, the A/C output was good for about a week, then just started blowing less and less cold over a couple of days. Took it to a local independent who found that it was a little over a pound low. He recharged the system and used a sniffer to check for leaks under the hood, but didn't find any. It went dead again within a week. It seems like too much of a coincidence that the system quit working right after the accident, but I'm not sure how to go about convincing the adjuster (independent, hired by the other ins. co.) that the impact likely caused it. Has anyone had something like this happen? What are the weak points of the system where a leak is most likely to occur? Initially, to save time (I thought) I went through the other person's ins. co. Would I have been better off if I'd had my own ins. co. cover the damages and then collect it from the other guys? Is it too late to bring them into it? If they won't cover it, would I have any chance in small claims court?

Thanks