AC Evaporator question

[X53Jay4.8is]

For those of you that have had your Evaporator changed out what is the best quality brand of evaporator to obtain? I see that BMWs is on the order of $500 while the Beher - Malhe ones are substantially less. Any insight on the best one to get for an X5 replacement would be helpful. Thanks

[David.X5]

I put in the Behr. No problems since. Looked identical to the original to me. Pretty low tech part...

[X53Jay4.8is]

Originally Posted by David.X5

I put in the Behr. No problems since. Looked identical to the original to me. Pretty low tech part...

David did your Behr unit come with the foam surround on the evaporator like the original or did you have to improvise and add some foam surround of your own? Either way I am going to go with the Behr unit because the Original one is made by Valeo and they appear to have a very high failure rate on many of the BMW vehicles. You can trace a number of the failed evaporators to certain BMWs which many appear to be US built ones, hence Valeo evap units as opposed to the German built BMWs that are equipped with Behr units. So knowing this I am going to order the Behr unit. Out of the 4 E39 540is and two M5s I have never had an Evap problem but then again these are not Valeo units but Behr units. By the way which vendor did you use to purchase the Behr unit from ?

Jay

[David.X5]

Not perfectly sure anymore about the foam. I recall buying some stick on foam, so suspect it didn't come with it.

It was FCP Euro as they give lifetime warranty (not that it matters as it doesn't cover the crazy labor). They seem to drop ship, so you get a brand new unit from the factory. $113 in May 2014.