Hello. I am new to Brickboard, and a new Volvo owner as well, but I have some questions and thought I would see if I could receive some help here.

So, here it goes..............

I recently bought a 1985 Volvo 240 wagon. It ran great for about 3 weeks and then I started having a problem with it. The car drives perfectly fine and then the power suddenly drops down - I seem to loose about half the horse power instantly. There is no change in the sound of the motor prior to the power drop. No backfire, no stackfire, no sputtering, just an immediate feeling of an excessive load on the motor. The transmission does not downshift. It's just as if a sudden load were put on the motor. This has happened several times. The motor has stopped once in this condition. This condition lasts anywhere from a half of a second to 3 seconds. This continued for about 2 weeks and happened intermittedly about half a dozen times. The car still usually drives without incident.

Now the car is making a soft clucking/squeeking noise that seems to be comming from the air conditioning compressor. The last time I drove the car, it did the power drop 5 times in about 1/2 a mile and then started making this noise. I have not driven it since for fear of getting stuck somewhere or making the problem worse. The sound that seems to be comming from the air conditioning compressor was not present when I purchased the car about 1 1/2 months ago.

Apparantly the problem is a faulty air conditioning compressor, but as these must be fairly expensive, I don't want to assume anything.

Does this problem make sense to anyone? Is it reasonable to think that a air compressor could be grabbing and creating an excessive load on the engine sufficient to slow the motor a great deal or stall it? Is there any way to disable the air conditioning system without disrupting the power steering which runs off of the compressor? If not, is there a good source for replacing the compressor or does it seem that I'm headed in the wrong direction in diagnosing this problem.

This is a great car that I like very much, I just dont have a lot of money to deal with this situation.

I appreciate any and all input.

Much thanks,

Michael