Rebuild Upgraded Kanger Dual Coil to a Single Vertical Coil

[leekeylee]

Hi All,

**** UPDATE 24/10/2014 - Once you have read how I do this please read my update post #13 ****


Firstly an apology for the quality of some of the images below as it is using my crappy samsung phone camera. Also I have put this on a few posts as I can only attach five images at a time.

Well I received my EMOW Mega yesterday for my istick, looks great btw in silver on a silver istick



The thing is with my other Kanger Protanks and the old sytle coils I would re-build them to save a few pennies and because I don't like silica I would wick with Muji Japanese Cotton but this new tank comes with the new upgraded enclosed dual coils.

From what I have read some people say that they cannot be re-built and others say they can. Well they can and it is an easy job. The hardest part was getting the chimney off without damaging it but I have a nice trick for that I will show you below.

So now I was thinking as I have a good airflow control ring on this new tank and everyone seems to be raving about the aspire BVC I thought why not let's build a vertical coil. So here is how I have done it.

The original coil I got with my tank


Don't try and wiggle the chimney off first like we would normally do with the old coils. Pull out the bottom pin and rubber gromet


Next from the bottom pull out the old coils and all the wicking material


Now I used a 2.5mm drill bit, with the flat side inserted in the bottom


Continued Below

 

[leekeylee]

I then gave the drill bit it a few taps with a hammer, quite forceful but not over hard and on the first one I did the top chimney pinged off with no damage to the chimney. The second one I tried did't budge but it had made it a little lose so I then put the coil in an old T3S base and used a pair of needle nosed pliers and pulled the chimney straight up and it came off


Next I used 28 gauge kanthal 10 wraps around a 1.5mm drill bit to create a micro coil should be around 1.6ohms when done.


Next I use a strip of Muji cotton just a bit wider than the coil and wrap it around the coil




Continued below

 

[leekeylee]

As you can see I have inserted the coils and cotton from the top in to the head whilst still leaving the drill bit in place

Next put the gromet and pin back in the bottom


Trim the wires or twist them off and you are nearly done.


Gently by twisting the drill bit and pulling up remove the drill bit from the coil and check the resistance perfect 1.6ohm


Now putting the chimney back on again is a bit of a pain but whilst still on the ohms tester I used the needle nosed pliers to grip the chimney and push it back in to place


There we go job done, one vertical coil in the new enclosed Kanger heads


So how does it vape? very well because the airflow is going up the inside of the coil I am getting great flavour and enough clouds for the way I vape. It wicks very well especially because I use the japanese cotton, not had any dry hits, gurgles or leaks.

Apart from getting the chimney off which is a bit of a pain but I think once you have done it once it will be easier on the same head the only other thing to be careful of is how much cotton you use which is a bit of trial and error. When you get to know the correct amount you need then it works really well.

Some might say is it worth the hassel? well I think it is as I get to build the coils to the resistance I want and wick with material that I want and once you have your supplies of Kanthal, Cotton etc. no need to keep buying new heads until the actually break.

Yes with the vertical coil you have to build a new coil everytime you want to change the cotton but for those who do rebuild it is only an extra step which only takes a few minutes to do.

I hope this helps everyone in finding a vape that suits their needs as this method does suit me.

 

[cigatron]

Great job leek! Only thing I do different when reinstalling the chimney is to screw the wickhead back into the clearo base first. Then tap the chimney back in with the base firmly resting on a flat surface. This way there is no fear of applying undue twisting of compressive forces to the insulator or positive pin.

cig

 

[leekeylee]

Great job leek! Only thing I do different when reinstalling the chimney is to screw the wickhead back into the clearo base first. Then tap the chimney back in with the base firmly resting on a flat surface. This way there is no fear of applying undue twisting of compressive forces to the insulator or positive pin.

cig

Thanks for the tip, It was screwed in to the old T3S base that I used when I put it on the ohms meter, I suppose I should have taken it of the meter first !!

Cheers

 

[bholcomb22]

Thanks for posting this. My gf has an evod glass. I'm going to have to give this a shot.

 

[leekeylee]

Thanks for posting this. My gf has an evod glass. I'm going to have to give this a shot.

Does the evod glass have an air flow control ring ??

I find the more air flow the better for these vertical coils, if it doesn't and the air flow is not that good you could drill out the holes in the base to make them larger

 

[Mazinny]

Thanks Leekey !

I suppose 1.5 mm is the exact cutoff for the pin to thread over the pinhole. I use jewelers screwdrivers instead of drill bits, and my 1/16th ( 1.5875 mm ) would not fit in the pinhole. I have another screwdriver set in metric denominations and the 1.4 mm one went through the pinhole fine.

I would imagine the dual coil heads, with the longer flange would be a lot easier for the coil placement. I don't have any of the newer coils with enclosed wicking, but i will try it with the older style dual coil heads.

Thanks again, especially for all the pictures !

 

[defdock]

tips on rewicking WITHOUT changing the coil. ---- when placing the coil in the unit, do not prewrap the cotton around it. place and center the coil like said above, then proceed to tamper down cotton. unlike the single coil regular builds, these require more cotton. after cotton is tampered in, then remove the drill bit.



to change out the "spent" cotton - replace the drill bit into the coil, and use a toothpick or something similar to "pry at" the wick to pull it up. - dry burn then rewick from there.



ive ben rebuilding the original single coil heads into bvc, and i find its alot easier to rewick then a normal coil lol.

 

[leekeylee]

tips on rewicking WITHOUT changing the coil. ---- when placing the coil in the unit, do not prewrap the cotton around it. place and center the coil like said above, then proceed to tamper down cotton. unlike the single coil regular builds, these require more cotton. after cotton is tampered in, then remove the drill bit.



to change out the "spent" cotton - replace the drill bit into the coil, and use a toothpick or something similar to "pry at" the wick to pull it up. - dry burn then rewick from there.



ive ben rebuilding the original single coil heads into bvc, and i find its alot easier to rewick then a normal coil lol.

I have done this with the older style heads but sometimes did not get the cotton amount correct so now I use the muji around the coil I know exactly how much to use every time

Cheers

 

[Buster282]

nice job leakee lee! thanks for posting!

 

[crg31953]

Great job there lee!! This will definitely be helpful!

 

[leekeylee]

Hi All,

I am glad that you are finding this helpful.

An update for everyone on this as well. This morning I wanted to change the juice in my EMOW Mega and when I change juice I always either put a new head in that I have already made vertically as I don't like any "cross contamination" of flavour but as I had a spare 20 minutes I thought I would just re-build the one already in.

So half asleep at 6:30am this morning I got my little box of tricks out and stripped down the head. I did notice the chimney is now easier to get off with some needle nose pliers around the chimney, nice firm grip but don't bend the chimney and a straight upward pull. Came off nice and easy.

Took out the old coil, cleaned the cup, chimney, pin and gromet and got my kanthal out to wrap a new coil. I thought I would do a wrap or two less to get down to about a 1.2 - 1.3ohm coil.

In my sleepy state I didn't noticed that instead of my 1.5mm drill bit I use to make my coils I picked up a 2mm drill bit. Once I had made the coils given it a burn to compress the coils together and put it back on the drill bit then I noticed it was the 2mm drill bit !!!

Damm - I know with the older style heads as I have tried before with a 2mm drill bit that the drill bit is too big for the bottom pin and it will not go over the drill bit.

I picked up the pin from the new enclosed style head and it fits perfect over the 2mm drill bit so I guess with these new heads Kanger has slightly increased the diamater of the pin I would assume for airflow.

So I thought why not lets give it a go, so I wrapped my Muji cotton around the coils as per my pictures and put it all back together. Checked the resistance and 1.2ohm.

Filled up the tank with my "Exotic Fresh" 50/50 from LTEcigs let it soak for a few minutes a couple of primer puffs and BAMM wow OH MY GOD I thought my 1.5mm coils were good 2mm is bloody amazing.

On the EMOW air flow control I have actually had to close one of the holes off so it is not fully open, on my iStick which I know has issues with not reading the correct voltage, I started low and started to turn it up and it has just got better and better.

Found my sweet spot at 12watts which is 3.7 ileaf volts which is closer to about 4.5 actual volts

The flavour is soo good and great clouds I think I am going to vape this full tank in a few hours and have to refill !!!

Vaping is just getting better and better for me trying all these different things !!

 

[Fstop]

Eurecka!!! Thank you leekeylee

 

[jafmf95]

Nice post, leekeylee.

This is how I've been rebuilding my heads for a while now. Just a quick note on getting the chimney off:
When using pliers to pull the chimney off, if you need to wiggle it (when they are newer), use the liquid slots on the sides of the head as an axis. Wiggle back and forth just slightly towards those slots and it will give you a tiny bit of wiggle room without bending the chimney.

Another FYI - if you end up with poorly made "clone" heads, you will find out quickly. The pliers will crush the chimney flat with very little pressure. The chimneys on authentic Kanger heads will take a good beating.

Another quick note for anyone who uses this method to rebuild Aspire, Nautilus, SMOK Micro or Delta C3 heads: The outer sleeve surrounding those heads has a gap. In the stock heads, there is a cotton-like filler wrapped around the head under the sleeve. I use #400 mesh in its place when I rebuild - wicks like a champ but won't flood.

 

[leekeylee]

Nice post, leekeylee.

This is how I've been rebuilding my heads for a while now. Just a quick note on getting the chimney off:
When using pliers to pull the chimney off, if you need to wiggle it (when they are newer), use the liquid slots on the sides of the head as an axis. Wiggle back and forth just slightly towards those slots and it will give you a tiny bit of wiggle room without bending the chimney.

Another FYI - if you end up with poorly made "clone" heads, you will find out quickly. The pliers will crush the chimney flat with very little pressure. The chimneys on authentic Kanger heads will take a good beating.

Another quick note for anyone who uses this method to rebuild Aspire, Nautilus, SMOK Micro or Delta C3 heads: The outer sleeve surrounding those heads has a gap. In the stock heads, there is a cotton-like filler wrapped around the head under the sleeve. I use #400 mesh in its place when I rebuild - wicks like a champ but won't flood.

Thanks for the tips. I would only buy genuine kanger heads and have about 8 that I just rebuild when I need to so unless they break completely I shouldn't need any more

 

[Licensed Luny]

leekeylee, thanks very much both for the time you spent figuring this out and for the time you spent sharing it with us! I've been using "clonecores" instead of the ones that came stock with my various kanger kits and tanks, specifically because I couldn't figure out how to reliably get the kanger cores open and rewick/rebuild them. I may have to give your method a try with my little pile of stock cores sitting around gathering dust!

I have two questions for you. First, do you have a reliable way to rewick your versions without changing the coils, too? Have you tried the way defdock mentioned on the last page? Does that work for you? I've found I can get at least a couple uses out of the same horizontal coils by just rewicking, but I've not figured out a way to do this with vertical coils (at least not reliably enough that I don't take a high risk on trashing the coil.)

Second, I notice you said your 2mm-by-accident coil tested at 1.2 Ohm and that you're using it in a mega emow. Did you get that to fire on the mega emow battery, or are you using the mega mow tank on a different battery/mod? (My own mega emow battery seems to have the highest limit for acceptably low resistance of all my various batteries and mods; it usually refuses to play with cores that read out at 1.4 on my other devices. I'm wondering just how jealous I should be.)

Thanks again!

 

[leekeylee]

leekeylee, thanks very much both for the time you spent figuring this out and for the time you spent sharing it with us! I've been using "clonecores" instead of the ones that came stock with my various kanger kits and tanks, specifically because I couldn't figure out how to reliably get the kanger cores open and rewick/rebuild them. I may have to give your method a try with my little pile of stock cores sitting around gathering dust!

I have two questions for you. First, do you have a reliable way to rewick your versions without changing the coils, too? Have you tried the way defdock mentioned on the last page? Does that work for you? I've found I can get at least a couple uses out of the same horizontal coils by just rewicking, but I've not figured out a way to do this with vertical coils (at least not reliably enough that I don't take a high risk on trashing the coil.)

Second, I notice you said your 2mm-by-accident coil tested at 1.2 Ohm and that you're using it in a mega emow. Did you get that to fire on the mega emow battery, or are you using the mega mow tank on a different battery/mod? (My own mega emow battery seems to have the highest limit for acceptably low resistance of all my various batteries and mods; it usually refuses to play with cores that read out at 1.4 on my other devices. I'm wondering just how jealous I should be.)

Thanks again!

If you rebuild the head as I have done vertically but don't place the cotton around the head until it is in place you can carefully wrap the cotton around the coil as per someone else mentioned on this thread will work so you can take the cotton off to just re wick does work well. I have found that it is a bit of trial and error in getting the correct amount of cotton wrapped around you do need more cotton than you think and more than a horizontal build.

As for battery I use a eLeaf iStick which will fire coils from 1 ohm

 

[Skunkworkx]

May just have to try this....The coils that came with my Aerotank mini were great....the replacements, no so much

I don't have an ohm reader, but would a Multi-meter work for now ? test before or after burn in ?

Should my 650mah battery work with it fine ?

As for the wires of the coil, do you have a better pic on how/where the go (+/-)....or is it pretty self explanatory ? I've torn them apart before just to "see whats in them" and can't remember the coil wire placement off-hand.

Thanks.
Wanting to learn.

 

[Licensed Luny]

If you rebuild the head as I have done vertically but don't place the cotton around the head until it is in place you can carefully wrap the cotton around the coil as per someone else mentioned on this thread will work so you can take the cotton off to just re wick does work well. I have found that it is a bit of trial and error in getting the correct amount of cotton wrapped around you do need more cotton than you think and more than a horizontal build.

As for battery I use a eLeaf iStick which will fire coils from 1 ohm

Oops, you told us your battery in the very first post, my bad. Thanks again for the reply! The promise of being able to rewick between full rebuilds makes this even more tempting to try. Now, am I coordinated enough to avoid hurting both myself and my teeny vape gear parts when trying to hammer a drill bit through them??? Well, only one way to find out!

May just have to try this....The coils that came with my Aerotank mini were great....the replacements, no so much

I don't have an ohm reader, but would a Multi-meter work for now ? test before or after burn in ?

I'm still learning, too, but I think it's prudent to always test resistance before firing, if only to develop a good habit for your own and your equipment's safety. I find I often have to recheck after the test fire(s,) too. The resistance can change a bit. Of course, you'll risk burning out the center pin insulator dry burning these, but I don't think it's guaranteed you'll burn them every try. (I haven't.)

Before I had a mod that tested resistance for me I used my multimeter. It can be a bit of a juggle to hold the probe leads in the proper spots, for me anyway. Set the meter to resistance and short the leads before you start. I found my meter sees ~0.3-0.5 Ohm just in my leads, and that was without considering the additional resistance of testing through the narrow points of the probe tips. So I learned to subtract a bit from the readings it gave me for coils. Ohmmeters that can test with tight accuracy and precision down in the single Ohm range are pretty specialized and expensive. Generic around-the-house multimeters probably aren't those.

Should my 650mah battery work with it fine ?

It's like an ego battery? I *think* those are almost always at least protected, if not regulated, so you shouldn't be able to hurt them or yourself if you accidentally short the pin. Mechanical mods without protection circuitry will not respond well to such however. But I doubt you'd be asking this question at all if you were using a mech. *fingers crossed*

Test the ohms of the existing stock cores before you try. You'll want your rebuilt ones to match the resistance of your existing cores as closely as possible to get as close as possible to the same function from your system.

One thing to note, it may take a little longer for your battery to produce the vapor you're used to when you press the button here. The two stock dual coils that come out are thinner wire than the 28 gauge recommended here for us to build the new single vertical coil. Those stock wires may be less total volume metal that has to heat up compared to the new coil made of thicker wire. So while you might finally get far more satisfying vapor from this rebuilt coil, it might take you a few seconds longer to get any than you're used to. No reason not to try of course, just something to keep in mind as a possibility.

As for the wires of the coil, do you have a better pic on how/where the go (+/-)....or is it pretty self explanatory ? I've torn them apart before just to "see whats in them" and can't remember the coil wire placement off-hand.

Thanks.
Wanting to learn.

You should look around on youtube for tutorial videos, there are lots! And the more popular ones have nice, clear, up-close shots of what's going on. Search for terms like "rebuild kanger cores" and variants. You'll find people rebuilding cores that look slightly different from what you have, but the differences are mostly in the space between the chimney and the table. The pin assembly below the table will be very similar to the way yours work. I watched a few of those videos before trying it myself, and then the bottom pin and insulator came apart like I'd seen in the videos.

Cheers & GL!