Last year I had a piece of rebar bounce off a truck in front of me on the highway, the rebar smashed the grill and stuck in to the condenser, piercing it with a hole. Luckily that was all it did. However, my mechanic said the vehicle was find to drive and that the only problem I would have is when summer arrived, if I did not replace the condenser I would not have air conditioning. I asked if it was safe to drive and use the heater and defroster, he said yes.
I took the truck in June and my mechanic replaced the condenser and recharged the system, however, he advised that for some reason now, the system wasn't energizing and he had to run further tests.
end result, he told me the clutch on the compressor was bad and I now needed to replace the compressor.
My question is, would the hole in the condenser and me running the heater/defroster have damaged the compressor? The air conditioning worked perfectly prior to this.