Sorry to hear about the dealer jacking you around. Pretty typical.
I had the same problem with the local Toyota dealer a number of years back when my new (at the time) 4Runner blew a head gasket. They replaced it under warranty after much haggling. Of course the damn thing immediatly started throwing codes for a knock sensor and just running like crap. They said it's bad gas,gas cap, drives fine for them, rough idle at 700 RPM is ok, yadda yadda.

If one of your friends had an OBDII scan tool you can pull your own fault codes and save a bunch of time with the whole "diagnostic" hassle at the dealer. It helped me tremdously with getting the follw up work done on my truck.
They had to pull the whole top of the motor off to figure out they simply forgot to plug the knock sensor back in when the replaced the HG. I know because they couldn't give me the "bad" sensor they supposedly replaced.

I'm assuming you can do it the old fashinoed way by blipping the ignition on and off 4 times and counting the digital odometer flashes. Scan tool is much more specific.