I have had a problem where the air conditioning works great when the car is cold started and sometimes is just fine. On long drives after a few hours driving ( sometimes less) the blower is clearly blowing loudly audible underneath the right side near glove box, Fan is on full, but no cold air is coming thru the vents except for a very small dispersion of air. it's cool, just hardly coming out. If you stop and let the car cool down. The next day, it's back to normal. I did a full service and re-packed the freon. Same deal. Anyone know anything about this. Everytime I take i to my mechanic it's working. Pesty problem. Greatly appreciate any responses.

Thanks,

Jon Pousette-Dart

I am from Portugal and I have a V50. Since beginning I’m looking for an answer to a similar problem. When I go on long travels ( sometimes not so long ), my air conditioning start to have problems and the cold air that should continue in the vents seems to disappear. The only thing that I feel is a small dispersion air but definitely not cold air like should be. I also check that normally this happens when the external temperature is the same ( or almost ) like the temperature that we have inside the car.
If I turn off the air conditioning and wait some minutes, everything start to work properly form some more time and then happens again. If I turn off the car, in the day after everything is ok, and even worst, it keeps ok in some journeys, so is very difficult to have the chance to show the problem happening to the dealer.

My dealer already update software and change two sensors but it seems that nothing resulted because I still continue with the problem.

What I know is that we are clients and we don’t have the fault of these problems so Volvo should start working really hard to solve this otherwise in the future they will need too much marketing to convince someone to buy a Volvo car. Where is the quality of these cars?

We still wait for a positive answer. If Volvo doesn’t know the problem at least should change the completely system. I’m sure that it will solve the troubles and clients will be definitely more happy!!

I'm a tech for a local dealer and may be able to help. This is a very common problem with the v70 and s80. What happens is when the A/c compressor gets hot from long distance driving or extended use the clutch stops engaging. When the compressor cools down it will start to operate normally. The fix is a new compressor clutch, but is is usually just easier to replace the whole compressor. To make sure this is the problem take a look at the compressor when the A/c starts to blow hot. If the clutch is not engaging chances are that the clutch is bad.

Here's another possibility: a bad temperture sensor that causes the a/c coil to ice up. It only presented itself on longer trips when the a/c could run long enough for the ice to build up. The more humid it was, the faster it iced up.

The identifying symptoms were cold air would always blow from the vents, but after the coil iced up, the airflow was minimal regardless of the fan setting or vent choice. The symptoms always disappeared after the car (a/c) was turned off and sat for a few hours in the heat.

We took the car in and after two visits the dealer replaced the evaporator (by that time it had become very musty from mold growth) and a sensor (p/n# 30665118-3, IAT sensor). It is working find at the moment, we'll see how it goes next summer.

Ours was done under warranty and I believe that there may be a Volvo tech service note (TNN) out about the problem. IAT is short for intake air temperature sensor--I don't know if this is the same one that is in the engine control system, the engine (non-turbo) seemed to run fine despite the a/c problem.