Last month my car started overheating while I was idling but was fine otherwise. About a week later my cars check engine light and my electronic throttle control light came on. I took it to an auto store immediatly and did the diagonosis on it. It came up with P2181 Cooling system performance with no reported fixes. Few days later it started overheating while driving. It only took two or three blocks before in the red. Decided to go to the local dealership (didnt want to go there but car is still under warranty) and they said since my boyfriend had messed with it trying to see what was wrong it wasnt under warranty. They said the wrong kind of coolant was in and that i needed to replace my thremostats/ So we changed out the two thremostats and drained/replace new coolant. It is still is over heating. Any suggestions?
The wrong coolant would not kill it. Is the fan running when it is idling? Is all the air out of the system? Is it loosing fluid? Overheating can kill an engine. Never let it get in the red.
Your boyfriend messed with it? How? By adding coolant? Did he touch thermostat? Why?
They cannot use that excuse unless they can PROVE that he did the damage. You can get all your money back and they have to find and fix the problem under warrantee.
Proving that the antifreeze caused the damage is going to be extremely difficult if he used a major brand coolant. It does not have to be Chrysler coolant, the universal long life coolants are approved. Only the old “green stuff” could be problamatic, but even that stuff doesn’t issues in this short of time.
If he used Dexcool and didn’t completely get all the old coolant out, then you might be on the hook.
If the car has a radiator cooling fan (most cars these days do), the first thing is to make sure the fan is spinning when the engine overheats. If not, that has to be fixed first.