Immediately after a minor fender bender to the front right corner of my I35, the AC stopped working. Like I said, the wreck was minor. It only cracked the headlight and foglight and messed up the bumper a bit. Immediately afterwards, I noticed the screen in my dash that shows the outdoor temperature simply read ICY--------. No temperature reading was shown. The temperature that day was in the 70's at least. Concurrently, my AC stopped blowing cold. This happened last fall. The symptoms have not changed at all except for once recently the dash panel read ICY 37. Since then it returned to reading ICY------. The temperature is currently up in the 80's often and nothing has changed. My best guess is that the ambient thermometer is telling my car that its freezing outside so instead of actually cooling the air, it just pumps in air from outside. I have no clue if I'm right. I can hardly find any info about it and have no idea where the thermometer is located or where I would find it. If anyone has any information or insight about what is causing the problem or how to fix it, I would greatly appreciate it. I don't care if it a complex job, I just cant afford to take it to a shop and summer is coming up fast. Thank you!

 

Maybe the sensor is bad, maybe the sensor is missing. It is also possible that the sensor is there but the wires to it got cut, either from the accident or the repair work.

The ambient temperature sensor is located behind the bumper near the right front corner. If you stand in front of the car, look at the lower left corner of the radiator.