Here's a fun little story.

A few days ago, on my way to San Fran about an hour and a half from home, my Silhouette overheated. It went from normal to "in the red" within 30 seconds. I was on a bridge with no where to pull over and miles to go before the was anything resembling a shoulder. The car went into limp home mode as I tried to get out of traffic.
Once I was off the freeway, Google maps said I was within half a mile from an O'Reallys. I noticed the fans weren't coming on but I figured that didn't explain it getting as hot as it did.
At O'Reallys I picked up a fan relay, a water pump, a thermostat, a couple gallons of coolant and a new serpentine belt. That should cover any of the issues. And it was getting late so I figured it would be over prepared in the side of the freeway than under prepared.
Popped in the new relay, fans came on and I drove around the hills of SF while keeping an eye on the temp. It ran hotter than usual but only by a little. I got on the freeway and started to head home. It's a couple miles between the last exit in SF and the next exit. And as soon as I got onto the freeway, it jumped back to the red.
After pulling off, I noticed that the top radiator hose was empty. No pressure at all. So, in my head, the thermostat was less likely and the water pump more likely. I had a crappy little tool set with me, one of those $10 sets they sell near the checkout. Made it a little harder than it should have been but I got through it. Once I got the old pump off, I noticed a couple things 1) the Previous Owner had it filled with water and 2) he had also been filling it with some sort of "stop leak" product. I pulled a fist sized ball of stop leak fibers from the pump and it's housing. Cleaned it up the best i could on the side of the road and started to put the new one on. Hmm. Big bubble on the mating surface of new one. Can't even get it to fit into place, maybe if I had a file, but probably not even then. So I put the old one back on. It's got to work better without all that "stop leak" crap in it.
I get a few more miles and it's back in the red. But this time I notice that the top hose IS swollen. I'm guessing that the stop leak has clogged the thermostat. I've changed a hundred thermostat in my day, no big deal, right? Haha. Somebody at GM deserves a punch in the nose. I'd almost rather give this car away rather than change the thermostat again. Thermostat fails, time to get a new car.
Took me a good 10 to 12 hours to change the damn thing. I might have been able to shave an hour or two off that time with better tools, but I doubt it. Last week I converted my 61 TBird to disc brakes and changed the head gaskets. That process took about 12 hours, granted I did that in my back yard.
So that got me home without issue. So ran a little hot, like it would jump between 1/2 and the 3/4 mark but never in the red. Didn't even want to look at it yesterday so I took my non A/C F250 around yesterday. But I had cooled off a bit today (even though it got up to 106 today) so I changed the pump again. Topped off the radiator and took it for a drive. Right back up into the Red. Top hose swollen again, the overflow reservoir was spilling out. I'm about as hot as my engine. I made sure I spent extra on a thermostat that would fail open. I'm glad I didn't have a hammer with me at that moment. But I just drove it home, in the red. Because, screw this thing, and I was only a few blocks away.
No smoke, no oil in my coolant, no coolant in my oil, no service engine soon light. Just more overheating. Hoping that there's just an air bubble in the line so I spent another hour trying to get as much coolant into the system. Drove it around a bit more, and it's still running hot, just over the middle line. But it hasn't gotten back up into the red, yet.
Also, the fan relay failed again.

What am I missing.