Are your charred heads still using their "flavor wicks?"
This whole flavor wick business seems most suspicious to me. If the coil has enough juice, and your other variables are in order, having another wick laying on top shouldn't positively effect flavor, and would really seem to negatively effect flavor.
When you have a wick laying on top of the coil, instead of inside it, there is no where for the vapor to go. All that juice getting heated up between the wicks is just sitting there getting heated, and eventually charred. There needs to be airflow to take advantage of heated juice. The flavor wick is just covering part of the coil, stopping it from releasing vapor.
When vapor shoots off your coil, it's taking heat away with it. If the vapor can't escape the heat will build up and burn juice. At least that's my take on it. It seems the "flavor wicks" are just a lazy way for clearo makers to stop flooding issues, or at least give the user a fairly easy way of adjusting their feeding speed.
I don't use clearo based systems nearly enough to do any long term comparison myself, but if you are curious about the charred coils I'd suggest removing the flavor wick and seeing how it goes. If you have flooding issues, take two pieces of cotton, lay each one over the stock wick, at the ends where it meets the rubber cap. But not over the entire top of the wick and coil, just on the ends of the wick where it exits into the tank portion. I strongly suspect this would drastically cut down on the charring/gunking of wicks in clearo systems.
My sister uses protanks and other similar types exclusively and I'm always helping her out with horribly charred heads. The rebuilt ones I give her, which don't have any wick covering the coil, but otherwise are pretty much identical last far longer, and are much easier to bring back to life with a dry burn.
Lack of attention on the coil build itself on behalf of the manufacture could also produce choked wicks, which will char up much faster as well. I've seen a few tight enough I couldn't pull the silica out without completely yanking the coil out of the head.
This whole flavor wick business seems most suspicious to me. If the coil has enough juice, and your other variables are in order, having another wick laying on top shouldn't positively effect flavor, and would really seem to negatively effect flavor.
When you have a wick laying on top of the coil, instead of inside it, there is no where for the vapor to go. All that juice getting heated up between the wicks is just sitting there getting heated, and eventually charred. There needs to be airflow to take advantage of heated juice. The flavor wick is just covering part of the coil, stopping it from releasing vapor.
When vapor shoots off your coil, it's taking heat away with it. If the vapor can't escape the heat will build up and burn juice. At least that's my take on it. It seems the "flavor wicks" are just a lazy way for clearo makers to stop flooding issues, or at least give the user a fairly easy way of adjusting their feeding speed.
I don't use clearo based systems nearly enough to do any long term comparison myself, but if you are curious about the charred coils I'd suggest removing the flavor wick and seeing how it goes. If you have flooding issues, take two pieces of cotton, lay each one over the stock wick, at the ends where it meets the rubber cap. But not over the entire top of the wick and coil, just on the ends of the wick where it exits into the tank portion. I strongly suspect this would drastically cut down on the charring/gunking of wicks in clearo systems.
My sister uses protanks and other similar types exclusively and I'm always helping her out with horribly charred heads. The rebuilt ones I give her, which don't have any wick covering the coil, but otherwise are pretty much identical last far longer, and are much easier to bring back to life with a dry burn.
Lack of attention on the coil build itself on behalf of the manufacture could also produce choked wicks, which will char up much faster as well. I've seen a few tight enough I couldn't pull the silica out without completely yanking the coil out of the head.
Last edited:
)
