Ken,
It sounds like you pretty much got the main spots there. No I don�t line the whole interior, but I do line foil on the bottom floor with about 1" folded up tight against the sides over those bottom seams and I foil line the ash pan, the water pan washes out with no problems, but the bottom takes a beating from the smoke hitting it directly so maybe lining the bottom wouldn�t be a bad idea, but how much business do we really want to give to Remolds Warp right?.
As to my major cleaning regiment, well it�s about the same as it is for my CS:
1. Brush with a wire brush any heavy deposits off the racks or in the corners
2. Put about 2 cups of vinegar in the water pan and run it at 275 for about two hours
3. Then lightly spray the inside with Pam
4. Wipe the inside down with paper towels to get any heavy oil off along with anything else that comes off.
5. Re season with a sweet wood (hickory, apple) for 2-4 hours.
I routinely do this every other month or if I�m really using it heavily I�ll give it major cleaning, but otherwise, just keeping the pans & racks cleaned and changing out the foil every cook seems to work for me in-between.
Sounds good on those ribs, yeah keep the door closed! I had a bungee cord wrapped around it at one point to keep that door shut; I later put on a door latch, because that was one of my big grips with my MB. The pressure inside would blow open the magnetic door seal which couldn�t hold, so whom! Door open enter the rush of O2 and then the chips on fire! Not good, vs. my CS which has a latch that could hold back a tsunami.
I use about a cupful of mixed hickory & apple wood chips for mine, and I always remove any bark or funky looking pieces. I don�t use wet chips, because they wont smoke up as fast, and can be hard to start up (which prevent you from infusing as much of the smoke flavor as possible because the meat is still cooler and can still accept more smoke flavor vs. at the end of your cook when the meat pores are sealed up and the smoke only darkens the exterior of the meat) plus I think wet chips make smoke bitter, and the old saying is: the sweeter the smoke, the sweeter the meat.
On the ribs, if you go for a 4-5 hour cook with the apple juice on the pan, you might want to consider doing a Chicago style finish on them, since I doubt there would be any bark to them, but seriously moist and fall off the bone. So after the smoker has finished doing its job, fire up a grill to high, and let it get real hot. Lightly brush on a thick BBQ sauce (I especially like Sweet Baby Rays from Chicago) but KC Masterpiece or one of a similar thickness will work too, give them a quick & light charring (just a few seconds on each side, if you go too long or for minutes you will mess �em up!), and I think you�ll really like the final results.
