sailing220

But if his engine is overheating there probably is a cooling problem.

ski

Sorry to rain on your parade, but it's the owner's responsibility to make sure all fluid levels are properly adjusted. So if the dealer claims that they did not touch anything relating to your cooling system during the visit, and your car is out of warranty(which apparently is the case), then you have to pay for any engine damage incurred from a low coolant level.

157dB

The sporatic idle could have been the GTs failsafe cooling mode
and not the vacuum hose. If you told them the symptoms
and they diagnosed a bad vacuum line and sent you on your way
and it was low coolant to begin with...... dealers fault

turbotbirdguy79

Yeah,to a certain point.The tech that worked on it should have done a M.P.I on ther car and topped all fluids off.If it was me,I would have looked for a reason why the coolant jug was low(leak,etc).But yeah I wouldnt bring my car back to the dealer,they rape you with a drivability diag and cant even top off your fluids(If it was low before it came in).But theres not really much you can do,like the OP said,a low or empty resovoir wont cause the car to overheat.I would be asking what line they repaired though and look under the hood to see if they had to remove ANYTHING that has to do with the cooling system.Let us know and goodluck!

Xeno

+1 with it's the owners fault to a point, but since it was taken in to be serviced for an unknown engine problem, the service people should have checked everything that can cause an engine problem.

similar thing happened to my mom's jeep; the engine was running irregularly so we took it to the dealer. they 'diagnosed' it as a loose connection with the battery. the next day, still had engine problems and died completely; it turned out the hose that went from the coolant tank to the radiator was bad/leaking and the storage tank was completely empty. we replaced the hose and filled the tank back up and it ran fine afterwards. funny thing is, the coolant tank and the battery sit right next to eachother... dealer should have noticed the tank was empty; they didn't really 'diagnose' anything.