Monday, June 28, 2010

Front impact beam in Swift VDi

Recently, I had my front bumper removed and took a good look at what lies behind it. I was very much reassured to see a strong front impact beam protecting the intercooler, condenser and radiator in the event of minor frontal impacts.



The vertically aligned heat exchanger on the left (car's right) is the intercooler -- it cools the hot compressed air (air gets hot when compressed) coming out of the turbocharger before admitting it into the engine. The other large rectangular heat exchanger is the AC condenser -- its job is to cool (and consequently liquefy) the hot compressed refrigerant coming out of the AC compressor. The radiator (a bit bigger in size as compared to the AC condenser) is visible behind the condenser.