We enjoyed another week as temporary residents of Mesa, Arizona. We’ve been coming here every year for the winter months since we hit the road – this is our fourth year here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. From 2006 to 2009, we lived here in Mesa full-time in a sticks-and-bricks home about 3 miles away from Viewpoint.

I had a couple of minor projects to attend to last week. When I dumped our gray water tank, I noticed a slow drip coming out of the bottom of the plastic pan in the wet bay. Later, I went to see about taking the cover plate off the wet bay to inspect the water lines, but the drip had stopped and all was dry. The next day, I saw the drip again. Taking the cover plate off the wet bay involved removing 14 screws. Once I did that, I saw that I really only needed to remove 11 of the 14 screws. Three screws were attached to a stiffener board that came off with the plate. Next time I’ll know.

I found the source of the water drip. There’s a plastic fitting in the PEX fresh water line with a small valve and connector to supply the ice maker in our freezer. This fitting had a hairline crack and was leaking. I made a trip to Ace hardware and bought a new fitting. I had to replace a short section of PEX tubing and it was job done. I neglected to take any photos while I worked.

The other minor project was routine maintenance on Midget-San. Modern cars make it easy to forget how much maintenance we once had to perform on automobiles. Unlike modern cars with sealed bearings and lifetime lubricated ball joints, our 1972 MG Midget requires chassis lube on the front suspension components. There are zerk fittings on the ball joints and king pin links and trunnions. These need to be greased with NLGI #2 bearing grease.

To do this, I needed to raise the Midget – it sits only a few inches above ground level making it impossible for me to get underneath the car. I jacked the car up and supported the four corners with jack stands. I used a grease gun and a cartridge of grease to inject grease into the zerk fittings.

I also had ordered a new distributor cap and rotor along with an ignition wire set from RockAuto. Nowadays, cars have separate coils mounted directly on the spark plug, eliminating the distributor and ignition wires. Modern platinum or iridium spark plugs can last 50,000 miles or more. Not so on the 1982 Nissan A15 engine in Midget-San. It is equipped with an electronic ignition module, so there isn’t a set of breaker points to replace. This is the only electronically controlled item on the car. The distributor is otherwise an old-fashioned device with a vacuum advance mechanism to control ignition timing. The single ignition coil is a Bosch blue coil feeding high voltage to the center terminal of the distributor cap where the current then travels through the rotor to each ignition wire and on to the appropriate spark plug.

These parts can wear and need periodic replacement. The high voltage arcs from the rotor to the distributor cap terminals resulting in wear on both components. The ignition wires delivering high voltage to the spark plugs can break down, allowing the current to arc to ground rather than firing the spark plugs. As part of my preventive maintenance schedule, I replaced the cap, rotor and ignition wires. It’s a fairly easy and straightforward job.

Overall, the maintenance work was easy and didn’t take a lot of time or effort. These are the things you need to do to keep a 48-year-old car with a 38-year-old engine running smooth.

In my last post, I mentioned a new recipe I wanted to try. It was Smoked Paprika Chicken Legs with Chimichurri. I made a rub with paprika, coriander seeds, lime zest, salt and pepper and two tablespoons of olive oil. This created a paste-like rub that I massaged into the chicken leg quarters.

I set the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker-grill to high (450 degrees). The chicken leg quarters cooked on the smoker for 45 minutes.

While the chicken leg quarters were cooking i made the chimichurri by putting a cup of parsley and a cup of cilantro along with jalapeno, onion, garlic cloves, fresh squeezed lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper in a food processor and pulsed it until it was creamy. This was served directly on the chicken.

The result was tasty and it’s a recipe worth repeating. Next time, I think I’ll use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. The high setting on the Traeger made a pleasantly crispy and tasty skin on the chicken.

Our Superbowl Sunday plan had a bit of a hectic schedule. Donna had tennis in the morning and a clarinet lesson in the afternoon before we drove to Mike and Jodi Hall’s for food, drink and the game – and cigars for Mike and me. The day before, we went shopping at Winco foods. I looked at the babyback ribs there, but wasn’t impressed. The only babybacks they had were Hormel brand, frozen rock hard and they didn’t look very meaty. We tried Fry’s grocery and they didn’t have any at all! We then went to Basha’s where I found nice looking fresh (not frozen) babybacks.

I did my usual thing with two racks of ribs on the Traeger Sunday afternoon. We took them to Mike and Jodi’s place around 3:30pm. Jeff and Chrissy Van Deren were there along with Mike’s sister, Connie, and Jodi’s sister Jackie. Donna made stuffed mushrooms and a vegetable tray. Mike had a whole chicken on his smoker grill. We had plenty of food for all. It was a good time and we enjoyed the game.

The weather had been great all week with daily highs in the low 70s. The weekend was warmer and we hit 78 degrees on Sunday! But on Monday, a cold front moved over the area and we had a partly cloudy day with the high only reaching the low 60s. I think the warmest part of the day was late morning, then it got colder as the day wore on. Last night, the temperature dropped to 34 degrees and we have a freeze warning tonight. Cold temperatures with the highs only in the 50s are forecast for the next few days. As I type this, it’s clear and sunny outside but the temperature is only 50 degrees. This cold spell should break by Friday and we’ll be back in the 70s.

*Just so you know, if you use this  link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!