[V8] AC Failure

[Scott Baumann / Progressive Technology Solutions]

Hello to all.  After some 80K miles of hard travel in the past 1.5 years with the old V8, she finally has come up with a failure (beyond normal maintenance, that is!) that needs to be addressed.  I parked her in her stall for the night (run hard & put away wet?) with a fully functional AC system, as cold as I could ever ask it to be.  
    The next morning, my wife took a trip into the Twin Cities and back - pretty warm out - about 85 Deg F or so - and she came home & remarked that the AC was not working.  Strange.  Took her out for a spin to see for myself.  Sure enough - the compressor is not willing to kick in.  The downside on this system is that, when the kompressor is kaput, there is no real fresh air source to the cabin that does not see a temp rise from theh engine/climate control system.  Makes for a warm drive!
    I have done some limited research in the archives (all 6 months worth), without much success.  One thing I will try is to splice the relay conn's to see if the compressor kicks on (I believe that bypasses the high/low press and high temp cutout switches).  If the compressor does indeed kick into service, I suspect that means that either I have experienced a bizarre leakage of R12, or one of the various switches is shot.
    Any BTDT's on trouble-shooting the V8 AC systems??

Thanks

Scott Baumann