The A/C compressor in my wife's car spit it's guts up at 80000 miles. Is this a common problem? I hear rumors that there are other cases of this...

by guts...do you mean the freon....or the internal workings????....

It looks like the housing of the compressor cracked and was leaking freon and lube.

the loss of lube can cause the internal workings to wear abnormally and eventually break. about it being a common thing....that im not sure of.