Engine Overheat Problems of Ford Ranger

I bought a 2000 Ford Ranger. I have kept the all the upkeeps for this car and more according to the Ford dealers instruction manual for the Ford Ranger truck. It has about 81000 miles on it. I recently had to pay $2300. 00 to the kearny mesa Ford to fix my car. I do have the cruise control on it. One day, I smelled antifreeze. My heat gadget did not go off. There was no indication that the truck was overheating, but I chose to bring it in. I thought it was probably a leak in a hose. It turned out the a heating element was "probably the culprit", but they found through their computers that the engine had to basically be rebuilt because the engine had overheated. My concern was that not once did my heating gauge tell me that the truck was overheating. That is dangerous. I do not know if this is connected to the cruise control problem, but for a heating gauge to not go off when there is sever heat going on in the engine is dangerous. I could have gotten stranded in a dangerous place or the engine may have exploded on the freeway with the enormous damage that took place. I thought this needed to be reported. Ford couldn't tell me why the heating gauge did not work. They told me that now and then even trucks that are kept up go wrong. That is not a good answer when this could have caused a serious accident.

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