Dirty cabin filter installed backwards broke air conditioning?

[sven337]

Hi,
while I was doing something else on the car, I figured I would check if the cabin air filter needed to be replaced. It did, and until I could get the new one I reinstalled the dirty one (after having shaken it a few times outside to kick off as much crap as possible). Unfortunately, I installed it backwards, and I suspect it may have broken my air conditioning.

I wasn't in the car when it happened, and the person driving wasn't very technical - what they told me was that as soon as they turned on AC ("normal" ventilation worked fine), they saw "white smoke" come into the car. That smoke was apparently odorless, and stopped after a few seconds. When asked, they said they had no idea whether it could be condensation or real smoke.

Since then, the AC still works (without any white smoke), as you can feel cold air being blown inside the car, but it definitely doesn't work as well as it used to - the air is cold, while it used to be *very* (exceedingly) cold. With summer being on us soon, I'd like to have AC that works well.

I assume that some of the particles stuck in the filter were sucked into the system where they caused *something*. Any idea as to what that something may be, and how I can fix it?

Thank you