I took a good close look at the radiator fill port earlier after swapping out the bad radiator hose and noticed the top lip was deformed ever so slightly. I tried blowing into the overflow hose and heard a leak. I then removed the cap and rotated the inner seal assembly a bit to see what would happen if it seated in a different orientation and blew into it again. I did this several times and it would leak a little about 2 out of three times. I then got a scotch bright pad and carefully polished both the lower and upper seating surfaces for the cap. once this was done I could see the low spot on the upper seating surface so I very very carefully raised it with some pliers and then re polished it. I then repeated the cap removal and re seating checks and it now holds at about 4 out of 5 times. I started thinking some more about it and released that most likely my problems must have been caused by the lower seal not seating since it does most of the pressure holding and the upper simply does the job of directing the coolant to the overflow and holding vacuum to pull it back in. it seems to be holding vacuum well now too so it probably is good to go now hopefully.

Ill definitely keep a good eye on everything else now too since it seems to have some more pressure in the system now that it doesn't leak.

I peeked in the old upper hose that had swolen and the inner rubber lining had several splits in it running along the bottom and it appeared the inner webbing was starting to fail as well. its good I replaced it when I did since there was not much keeping it from totally blowing out.