First indication that something was amiss; driving back from LA the A/C in our '05 Tribute quit, earlier in the city there were some squeaking sounds but I didn't think anything of it. Then in Freeway traffic (I-405) the temp gauge went into the red zone. I took the next exit and parked the car in the first parking lot. I open the hood and noticed that the coolant reservoir was empty and there were signs of dried up spray of coolant in the engine compartment. I called Mazda Roadside assistance and they towed the car to the dealership I'd requested, one that I frequent and bought this Tribute (and my MX-5 ).
Left the car at the dealer as it was already late and they couldn't immediately work on it, this was Friday night. The next day they called and gave me a preliminary diagnosis of what happened. Apparently the accessory belt came in contact with one of the radiator hoses and sliced through it. They'll have to replace the damaged hose and whatever else and then test the engine to see if it was damaged when it overheated.
I haven't gone back to the dealer so I could see exactly how a radiator hose could have moved into the path of a belt, which makes for a perfect "saw" to cut through hoses...
I remember, one of my first posts here, made back in late '04 was about Ford's 3.0 Duratec, asking if anyone had any experience with it... This is my first bad experience with this vehicle until now. It'd served almost 2 years and 25k miles without even as much as a hiccup. This may have been a freak accident in the engine bay or it may simply just be bad engineering/packaging. Either way, I am not going to keep this car outside of it 4/50K mile factory warranty.