BSD's vertical hollow core Micro Coil build for ARO, Evod, and Protank heads.

kgs-wy;11065868 said:

Hey there, PeeWee, welcome to the forums!

I'm happy that my original method for the SI T3 Kanger near-clone worked for WolfeTX, as well! I guess that goes to show that, while very well made, the Kanger was, indeed, intended to have heads that were just replaceable, as opposed to rebuildable -- as I've seen opined on the Internet in a few places -- which makes them more challenging in builds like this.

Now on to my, hopefully helpful, build and pics.

First off, I did get my first Kanger ProTank vertical hollow coil rebuild done successfully yesterday, with 28 ga. Kanthal A1 at just over 1.8Ω. Unfortunately I was very unsatisfied with it. Considering just how satisfied I was with the SI T3 rebuild, I presumed that either A: I wasn't pumping enough voltage/wattage (tried both settings on my MVP v2...) or B: I wasn't packing enough cotton in it. Both were the case, but in experimenting and stuffin' more cotton in, I ended up pushing my coil down enough that it burnt the gasket.

So I tore that head apart, took the gasket from my other head out and proceeded to rebuild it. This is the result!

First pic shows the coil as I ended up wrapping it. 11.5 wraps of 28 ga, came out to a bouncy 1.3Ω to 1.6Ω (I really need to either get a Kelvin add-on for my meter, or cobble one together sometime... . You may notice the extra length on the ends of the coil proper? That's because I'm using the method normally used when putting a standard horizontal coil into a Kanger-style head...

And there's the positive leg going through the middle of the gasket, then the negative goin' through the outside, with the positive pin ready to go into the gasket after feeding the gasket into the head's body.

There's the coil almost in place, with the drill bit centering it...

...and the coil still in place, showing off the gap between the bottom of the coil and the gap.

After using gentle tugs on the lengths of wire sticking out of the bottom of the atomizer head to get it to the right height, I double checked to make sure the coil was, essentially, still centered in the head.

Burn test, about a second in at 3.8 V, beautiful cherry color. I ended up with a beautiful orange-white glow between 2 and 2 1/2 seconds of firing time, so I was quite satisfied with it.

I forgot to take pics of my cotton pack, but I think it's nearly perfect. A tiny bit of gurgle (especially when it sits for more than about five minutes), but tolerable, especially when weighed against the serious advantages this build offers. That said, I may be putting a bit more cotton in this (the current juice I'm using is, after all, 65/35 PG/VG, so it's a bit thin...), and when/if I do, I'll post a pic for anyone having flow issues to use as a comparison. I might also try to pack it with some hemp twine I had laying about that I was using in my old, horizontal builds, like BSD said he did...

Finally, a double check of the resistance on my MVP v2 (and it's lovely A, er, R for "Resistance"... ). 1.4Ω was a bit lower than I'd originally intended (as I've read/heard in YouTube reviews that the MVP v2 is a bit hesitant to fully exploit anything lower than about 1.5Ω), but it worked out quite nicely. Clean, easy vapor, solid throat hit, and amazing flavor! I'm more than satisfied with this build.

Hopefully these pics -- and my older ones -- will help anyone else that's interested in trying this out.

Thanks once again to BSD for coming up with this and -- perhaps more importantly -- sharing it with us! As soon as my new Kanger heads come in (gonna order some v2 heads, since everything I've read has them being compatible with v1 equipment...), I'm definitely going to replace the stock coils with these. A bit of work to get right, but when you do, it's absolutely amazing, especially considering that it's all from "just a clearo".

Keep on vaping everybody!

-Laters...!
kgs-wy

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