We’ve always said that flexibility is the key to happiness with our nomadic lifestyle. Our original plan was to stay here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort in Mesa, Arizona for three months. We planned to hit the road on March 21st. It looks like Donna will be flying to New York City on April 2nd, for a television spokesperson job. So, we may extend out stay here for a couple of weeks because it’ll be more convenient to fly out of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport rather than Tucson or any other place we might end up in.

Meanwhile, we’re staying busy on the pickleball courts while I try to finish a few items on my to-do list. Donna has been chipping away at her project list as well. Yesterday she did a deep cleaning of all the wood cabinets. First she cleaned them with Murphy’s Oil Soap, then she conditioned them with Old English.

I received a part I’d ordered from McMaster-Carr the other day and installed it. Our Alpine Coach has a surge tank for the cooling system on our Cummins ISL 400 engine. The surge tank has a sight glass so you can see if the coolant level is correct. The problem I had was that our sight glass didn’t give a good look at the coolant – it looked dark regardless of the coolant level.  In the McMaster-Carr online catalog, I found a high-pressure sight for dark liquid, nickel-plated steel with a 1/2″ NPT threads. The part number is 1079K42 if you have an Alpine Coach and need one.

McMaster-Carr high-pressure sight

I wrapped the threads with Teflon tape to seal them.

Threads wrapped with Teflon tape

The old sight glass was useless.

Old sight glass on surge tank

The new one is much better. In the photo, you can see the pink coolant – it’s Fleetguard  ES Complete OAT long-life diesel coolant.

New sight glass – much better!

Large diesel engines with wet liner cylinders are prone to coolant cavitation. This phenomenon occurs when the fuel ignites and the liner vibrates and coolant moves away from the liner, creating a small vacuum. The coolant then rushes back to fill the vacuum. Over time, this can cause erosion and pitting of the cylinder liner. I’ve read that Ford 7.3 Powerstroke engines are especially prone to this as are the larger diesel engines. Special diesel coolant and supplemental additives are used to prevent this type of damage.

Donna likes her new Spyderco Santoku kitchen knife. Last night she used it to dice onions, mince garlic and chiffonade basil for a spicy shrimp pasta dinner made with yellow lentil penne. The dinner was superb!

Spicy shrimp pasta

We’ve had 80 degree weather this week and it looks like it will continue to be warm for at least another week. We’ll figure out our plan by the weekend and decide if we stay here at Viewpoint or move on.