Might have to retire my mini nautilus

[shangula]

I heavily used my mini nautilus from about November 2014 up until last March, and still use it lightly. It became my "stick in breast pocket" to go out for dinner setup with an istick 20W, or my "I need to go visit someone for an hour" setup, while I used my IPV Mini 2 more at home or long visits at my parents. I used to really enjoy the istick/mini nautilus setup, with only more gripes about inconsistent coils and some gurgling, but I have noticed in the last month or so, I'll fill it up with Boba's Bounty (expensive in Canada, up to $14 cnd for a 15 ml!) and even with a new coil, in 2 days of little use the juice would darken (oxidization) and almost become unvape-able (harsh throat hit, harsh taste,etc).... Expensive juice is just too expensive to have a tank darkened like that. I used to sometimes vape the darkened juice down, dump it out, and fill it up, and it would just darken again quite quickly. It sucks.

 

[Puff2K]

When my juice starts to darken, I replace the coil and wipe out the base. It has helped.

 

[thetrucker]

I had the same problem with my full size nautilus----juice tasting funny after a couple of days with heavy use.

I think the problem with all these tanks is they store 4 or 5 mils of juice and it doesnot get used up fast enough and the juice

gets exposed to the remaining air in the tank and gets stale before it all can be vaped.

I almost think that a person would be better off with a 1.5 mil tank and fill it up more often.

Just some of my theorys and thoughts---the juice darkens up when sitting in a tank and exposed to oxygen it seems that way

anyway.

 

[TX Foilhead]

I've seen the same thing with my nautilus minis and Subtanks as the coils came to the end of its life. I don't do it everytime, but since I had pairs of both I could rinse one out and give I've it time to dry. When I knew that time was approaching I tried to vape it down to the very bottom.

My REO's do the same thing to the juice, but I wick them with Ready x Wick so I can stick them under the faucet and wash them off.

 

[classwife]

Moved to Clearomizers from Ecigarette Technical Issues

 

[bloodless2010]

No need to retire a good tank! There's loads of ways of rebuilding different kinds of coil heads. You can pickup Kanthal and organic cotton (or any wicking/wire material of your choice really) just make sure it's quite thin (the wire) and look up a tutorial on how to rebuild them. Rebuilding coil heads will save you a lot of money and time and it could improve your experience with it

 

[Panorama911]

No need to retire a good tank! There's loads of ways of rebuilding different kinds of coil heads. You can pickup Kanthal and organic cotton (or any wicking/wire material of your choice really) just make sure it's quite thin (the wire) and look up a tutorial on how to rebuild them. Rebuilding coil heads will save you a lot of money and time and it could improve your experience with it

I have seen the video on rebuilding a BVC and he built a horizontal as the replacement so it was a moot point for me, may as well rebuild a Kanger PT2...That said if there is a rebuild for an actual vertical coil, I would love to see it!

 

[GeorgeS]

The Nautilus coils are not without issues, some factory created and some user created.

I'll often wait with baited breath when cracking a new coil out of its wrapping - will it have usable air flow? will it be shorted (DOA)? I'll blow air into the base with the screen side away from me hoping that there is decent air flow. (some are WAY to restricted from the factory)

I'll then prime it by flooding the insides with unflavored PG and set it on a paper towel on its side to soak in the prime. After a few minutes I'll blow the excess PG into the paper towel and install it.

Then comes the next two failures of the coils: 'gunking up' and burnt wick. While the 'gunking up' is somewhat fixable by some margin by dropping the coil(s) into a coffee cup and filling with boiling water - it may take a few cycles of fill, allow to cool off, drain and fill however after looking at some of the dark matter finally stop oozing out of my coils allowing them to dry over night afterwards and then priming as usual normally brings them back to have some more life. The burnt taste however never goes away. Lately I've been using 80-100% VG juice and if I get carried away with the voltage/power setting I'm going to end up with burnt coils and have to toss them.

Coils won't get 'gunked up' with unflavored PG or VG in any ratio (I've been told that when using unflavored my coils ought to last nearly forever) but I've found that 'dark' or heavy sugar juices will gunk or clog a coil in a matter of hours or days.

As long as they don't have a 'burnt' taste, a used Nautilus coil is recoverable.

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

It is my short experience that you can never Clean the gunk off the coil itself unless you dry burn it off.

That requires a wicking like Silica that can handle Some dry burning or just removing say the old cotton wicking, doing the dry burn,
then rewicking.

IMO, there is no cleaning that will actually De-Gunk the wound coil itself except getting the gunk Off the same way it got On there, Burning it Off.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[Panorama911]

It is my short experience that you can never Clean the gunk off the coil itself unless you dry burn it off.

That requires a wicking like Silica that can handle Some dry burning or just removing say the old cotton wicking, doing the dry burn,
then rewicking.

IMO, there is no cleaning that will actually De-Gunk the wound coil itself except getting the gunk Off the same way it got On there, Burning it Off.

I agree....I wish I could find a round micro wire brush that I could insert into the vertical coil and give it a good scrubbing. I have yet to find such a beast.

 

[thetrucker]

With my coils it seems the more gunk builds up the better it tastes.

It is like if you clean up a barbecue grill really well the meat does not taste good until you get that gunk built up again.

hahahahahahahahahaahah

 

[e-pipeman]

The thing is - two weeks. Use a coil for longer than this and you might get lucky but you might not (liquid darkens quickly). Change it.

 

[navigator2011]

I find it usually takes about a week of fulltime vaping for the liquid to brown up quickly with each refill--that's one indicator to me that it's time to wash the tank and install a new coil. Now that these coils are truly cotton filled, there tends to be some liquid feedback from the cotton into the reservoir. So, when the cotton gets brown, the liquid darkens much more quickly.

 

[misterholidayhouse]

I have found that washing them, blowing them out, then reinstalling them damp, refilling the tank and vaping for ten or 15 hits to evaporate off the water and reintroduce the juice will ad another week with no browning of the liquid. I've tried letting them dry completely overnight and the browning starts with the first refill and the taste is also off.

 

[GemInEye]

now wishing i would have seen the cleaning info before throwing out my last two bvc. Thought i couldnt clean them at all so i threw them out. I had googled but all i kept finding was how to clean the cartomizers lol. You guys rock.

 

[Rixsta]

I had the same problem with my full size nautilus----juice tasting funny after a couple of days with heavy use.

I think the problem with all these tanks is they store 4 or 5 mils of juice and it doesnot get used up fast enough and the juice

gets exposed to the remaining air in the tank and gets stale before it all can be vaped.

I almost think that a person would be better off with a 1.5 mil tank and fill it up more often.

Just some of my theorys and thoughts---the juice darkens up when sitting in a tank and exposed to oxygen it seems that way

anyway.

Do you think that sunlight has an effect on it too ? I'm asking because when I switched to the metal caged tank it seemed to take longer for this to happen.

 

[thetrucker]

yes it could very well have an effect on the juice getting brown----very possible.

 

[thetrucker]

This is what I did with my dual coil nautilus coil explanation under pic

this is a 1.6 ohm dual coils Aspire head that I gutted completely and drilled with a small size bit.

I drilled all four holes and pressed a tooth pick into one of the two opposing holes after

cutting the tip off the tooth pic and then did the same with the other opposing hole.

This leaves me with 2 wooden plugs plugging 2 opposing holes.

I then slide jewlers screwdriver thru the hole and thru a small coil that I tied and put

grommet and pin back in.

I just pull out the wick every 2 days and dry burn the coil and put new cotton wick back in

and ready to roll again.........

made a cotton wick and slide threw and leave tails about one half inch long and litely tuck

the tails down into

the nautilus base and wet the coil good and put it all together and it works good. Single

horizontal coil. Whatever size you can fit in the hole will work, I used 28 guage with 5

wraps---comes out to .5 ohms------fun fooling around with this.

 

[Guzz]

I agree....I wish I could find a round micro wire brush that I could insert into the vertical coil and give it a good scrubbing. I have yet to find such a beast.

5 Pc Airbrush Cleaning Brushes

 

[Panorama911]

5 Pc Airbrush Cleaning Brushes

@Guzz Thanks!..Harbor Freight, they have everything!