Recently when my wife and I were on vacation we had an issue with the a/c. After we were on the road for about 3 hours the a/c stopped working.

We went to the nearest Volvo dealer (Ocala, Fl) and they were unable to diagnose the problem. The mechanic, on a hunch, turned on the heater to max.
A giant puddle formed under the car and the a/c was back in service.

This happened three or four more times on our trip. Each time I shut off the a/c and after 15 minutes the a/c was back in service.

Has anyone else had this issue? I have a service appointment that I plan to cancel since I don't think they will be able to replicate the problem as the a/c works fine in local driving. It was only when we were on the road for a couple of hours that this occurred.

 

I have experienced something similar in my VW-CC. I could tell my AC evaporator was icing up as the airflow would go down over time and as you noted, if I turned off for 10 minutes, all was good. The dealer did a pressure check and found it too high and adjusted downward which helped a bit but I think this is a design issue where the duty cycle of the compressor just produces too much cold and the evaporator can't deal with a high humidity day if the AC is left on full cold.

 

Thank you!