I started my day with a quick trip to the skin doctor. Checking all my spots and stuff to make sure I have not accumulated some skin cancer stuff… I went into see him over a year ago, hum, maybe 2 years now and he immediately wanted to change up my medications for the rosacea (an inherited problem from my Dad) sometimes known as adult acne… His pushed until he had “dry eyes” or rather they watered a lot but not in the right spots. I hate this, in reading up on it I find that all the things I like… cause it to intensify??? Alcohol – remember in the old days the guys with the Red nose were always thought to be drunks… maybe they just had bad rosacea? also spicy foods, foods high in Histamines (red wine, aged cheese, yogurt, beer, cured pork-bacon, etc… ) damn that is my top 5 list right there… not likely that I will give up all my likes to side-step the triggers for this…
Anyway, I have had it for some time and in the previous days, I took pills for it (Tetracycline)… then they stopped making that so I had to swap to Doxycycline but it is a bit too strong and both could lead to other problems … that is why the Dr wanted to try other things… so we swapped pills to Minocycline… that didn’t help and we swapped ointments from Metrogel, to Finacia (SP) and then to Mirvaso and none of them really help. Although I must admit I am not near consistent enough in the use of any of them… I forget…t Today, he decided maybe I need to get back on Metrogel? I am wondering if I am just a test pattern on his screen for spot tests of everything in the cabinet? The one thing that did work some was not even prescribed by a skin Dr. and unfortunately it is associated with some pyramid marketing program from what I can tell… hell everyone sells it but it is damn high and they want you to sign up for monthly use stuff or pay way more to get it just when you need one… so I have held off that but may have to go back to it at some point? if I can’t find a substitute.
After my Dr. visit I made a run for breakfast and then back home to wait for the cleaning lady… duh! found out at about 11:30 that she wasn’t coming? Someone for got to tell me.
While I was working around the house, doing towels and other stuff… I did a little maintenance on the Jeep… it has not been heating like it should so I was checking it out and the radiator cap was covered with red paste? I just had the radiator boiled out last year and cleaned up but it was not full or gunk? IT WAS NASTY! so I called the mechanic and he said they could get it done this afternoon (flush the radiator and heater core)… I grabbed up my stuff and off to town…
First stop was to ship out some junk to the kids (they have not changed their address with the Post office yet and we still get a box full of junk every week…I toss about half and send about half to them). I then had a quick lunch and to the mechanic shop… once there I had to wait a while to get in line but once in he started to flush things out… boy the water coming out was rusty red and nasty… even smelled bad? he flushed the radiator and the core multiple times and was still getting some stuff out so they opted for the super treatment… dumped in Finish dish washing detergent and started the process again… well they said why not take it out for the rest of my errands and be back in an hour and we would flush it again…so I drove it around for an hour with Finish in the radiator… must be great stuff?
I made a run to the tag agent and got my special tag paid for… then home and picked up my antifreeze stuff so I didn’t have to buy a bunch of new… then back to the shop… at this time it was 3:30 and we had started this process at about 1:15… He drained it up and we flushed the core and radiator several times again with still some small amounts of red so one more load of Finish and run that for 10 minutes and then flush it all out several times again… it was cleaner and the heater was putting out heat so it was an improvement but not yet clean… but I figured if I keep the jeep I will have to flush it again in the spring… at that point he used a vacuum machine to suck out all the excess water… let that set for a few minutes then let the vacuum pull in fresh antifreeze mixture and then topped it off with a bit more… in this whole process we discovered that the radiator cap didn’t hold pressure? that may have been some of the problem as it constantly was passing some hot fluids when it went to idle or shut down… then those seem to boil off a bit and the process did it again? once we got the cap really clean underneath it was really loose so I just went and got another one and hope that may solve a lot of that problem and keep things moving in the right direction?
I know I should of gotten pictures but I was too busy watching this process to remember I had the camera with me? I am getting real bad at that… Will work on that failing. I finally got home about 5:20pm, so had spent all afternoon at the shop or roaming around while we tried to flush out that mess… in the future I think I need to have the radiator systems flushed about every 5 years or so… ? and monitor the cap to ensure it is tight from now on… buy hey the jeep is old, like me… things are bound to stop working right… I know I have…
WD0AJG