There's no frost anywhere. Plenty of CFM's in the registers... so the a coil isn't plugged. The filter is brandy new as well. Anyway... my thought on the intermittent cooling was MAYBE the contactor was starting to flake out under heavy loads but the unit conked out at 2am last night under less than peak load so, I checked it this morning and it was a-ok.
I just ran home to check on it again & finally the condenser wasn't running when the fan was still on and the t-stat was calling for cool air. Not a revelation, but something to work with! I checked both run cap's for the condenser and one was 9 mF of 16 & the other was about 12 mf of 30. They didn't show obvious signs of failure (usually you can see them kinda dome out the end with the terminals in them but a cap meter is a wonderful toy) I guess the condenser finally found the point where it tripped the internal overload from running w.out the cap's help.
I replaced both cap's and have to wait for the internal overload to reset. If it doesn't reset, it's toast. The replacement condensor is about $1k, which is about the point where I'd rather just replace it... but here's to hoping it comes alive when I get home and try to fire it up again. I have visitors coming from Vermont for 4 days... hopefully they have a cool house to welcome them!
Thanks for the hints.