REO Mini mowing through batteries

[jifjifjif]

Good morning, REOville.

I am pretty good with REOs and pretty knowledgable on how they work and how to keep them running well. My wife's mini (that takes the 18490 batteries) is a bit of an enigma, though. It has the new connections, but not the new 510. Here are the top two issues I have been battling since she got it almost a year ago:

Misfires-sometimes will not fire unless you spin the battery and retry
**I've cleaned it, swapped springs, cleaned and deoxit'd the contacts, etc. It still happens daily

Battery draining-she gets about an hour or two at most on a freshly charged battery
**She has all AW IMR 18490's and even the ones that we got it this week are draining in almost no time.

I have her coil at right about 1 ohm on an RM2. Now, she does vape it often, like twice per minute, but they are small little drags. She probably averages about 2 seconds per draw.

I have a Nitecore intellicharger 4-bay and it works just fine. I even meter her batteries with a multimeter when they come off........all at 4.19 when charged. I don't know what her batteries are reading when she swaps them after an hour......I believe 3.8-3.9

Does anyone have suggestions as to what might be causing either the misfires or more importantly, the batteries to discharge so quickly?

Thanks in advance.

 

[RuDawg7890]

I'm anxious to see the replies on this. I've had similar issues on LP Grands. For the life of me, I don't understand how spinning the battery makes it fire better, but sometimes it does!

I keep mine clean, use deoxit, but I even had these same problems on a brand new Grand.

I've had 4 AW's for a while, and I thought maybe I've worn them out, but I just got 4 VTC4's last week, and they don't seem to last as long as they should.

 

[supertrunker]

Battery drain | Steam Engine | free vaping calculators

You might have a look at this part of Steam Engine and see what you ought to be getting from your batteries. HRH has the older minis with the puny batteries.

I'm sure you do so, but you need to clean your batteries as well as your Reo. Spinning the battery, especially with the firing pin pressed is just a rather brutal method of cleaning oxidisation from the surfaces.

T

 

[SteamStack]

Did you clean the screw hole good for the spring? That tiny peice of aluminum that contacts the screw head is your ground connection on the mod. Make sure that's clean!

Weak connection will be harder on the batteries I believe.

 

[SteamStack]

Also how old are the batteries? Are the tops of the button all pitted from use with the old contacts from arcing? Id go all new bats on the new contacts for a solid connection.

 

[jifjifjif]

Screw hole is clean and spring is new. Deoxit used on all parts, as they should.

Some batteries are 6 months old, some are 3 months old and some arrived to me this week........all purchased from our friends at RTD Vapor.

 

[turbocad6]

I'd say use the mod hard for a few minutes and then check everything for warm spots, the only thing that should get warm ideally is the atty, whatever else you find warming up is sucking away unnecessary power. check the spring and where it bolts to the bottom of the mod, check the firing pin and the switch, if you find anything warming up then that's a point of high resistance and unnecessarily wasting battery power. where the spring bolts to the bottom of the mod is a common spot that rarely gets the attention it deserves

 

[SteamStack]

I've bought my last batch of aw 2200 batteries from rhe same place and out of the 4 batts only one will stay at 4.20v on the charger. Most will drop to 4.19v and I don't k ow if that's a sign of bad things for the battery?

I've read about one acting like it was a sign of a bad battery and sent them back for replacement.

I have not tried using a different charger then the new one I bought with the batteries.. a new Xtra vp4. So I dont k ow it's that's the issue or batts or a non issue. I should take a bat reading before using it like a day later just to see if it's really dropping off just sitting.

Doh.. I've got a batt just sitting there charged last night. Checked it and it read 4.18 on the charger and as soon as it started to charge it read 4.20V. Should take a reading with my dmm to be sure next time.

 

[d4gger]

How much juice is she vaping per battery, jifjiffff (sorry I'm bad with names)?

I dunno if it's available, but you might be able to find the discharge curve for those batteries at 4ish amps. Could be that most of the power is below mech vaping voltage.

If you have a D4 or other "smart" charger, it'll tell you time of charge and you can use the charge rate (375 or 750 mA for me) multiplied by the time of charge (subtract ten to fifteen minutes for the trickle period as the charge approaches full) to guesstimate the mAh from discharge to full charge. Discharge curves and charge curves, of course, aren't the same, but are linked tightly. The mAh you come up with for charging from, say, 3.8 volts should look a lot like the 1A mAh at 3.8 volts on the discharge curve.

The point to all that is that, if her batteries look like they're getting an appropriate amount of performance compared to the graph, you might want to look into a battery with better performance in the appropriate voltage range.

If they're not getting appropriate performance, look for resistance in the mod using a multimeter. To do that, remove the battery, short the 510 solidly with wire or a rigged 510 pin, and start at the pos pin and neg spring. If you get more than 0.1 ohm resistance after discounting lead resistance and ensuring solid contact, track it down.

I hope my novelette helps.

 

[jifjifjif]

Good question. Not certain. She might go through 3 bottles per day at 3ml per bottle.

 

[supertrunker]

If you want a job done properly....

Clean it yourself!

My bet is on the Reo being dirty and i base that on how often i have seen HRH clean hers (never). The other unlikely possibilities are faulty batteries or a faulty charger and i just doubt that that happens too often.

T

 

[d4gger]

I've bought my last batch of aw 2200 batteries from rhe same place and out of the 4 batts only one will stay at 4.20v on the charger. Most will drop to 4.19v and I don't k ow if that's a sign of bad things for the battery?

I've read about one acting like it was a sign of a bad battery and sent them back for replacement.

I wouldn't worry about a few hundredths variation in measurement. Dust particles can make that happen, and our batteries tend to rest up or down to nominal voltage (3.6-3.7 volts). If your batteries are moving a tenth of a volt in a day to a week you've got a problem. A few hundredths in minutes to days is just measurement variation or resting voltage drift.

 

[d4gger]

Good question. Not certain. She might go through 3 bottles per day at 3ml per bottle.

How many batteries for that likely 7-9 mL?

 

[SteamStack]

who installed the new gold contacts? Might be just not tight.. though trying to tighten them can strip the nipple or break it.

With the new ss 510 and ss nipple tighten it all ya want! You'll know when that connection is solid when you can't push the possitive contact to the side.. it will stay straight once it's tight.

Though if she's not getting any juice in the black delrin top then prob not loose.. loose connect the juice will oose out the little clear protective sleave on the contact pin.

 

[jifjifjif]

How many batteries for that likely 7-9 mL?

She said 6 batteries to get her through the day.

 

[ENAUD]

That seems off. Granted I run my little mini at 1.4-1.6Ω, I get through a three ml bottle on one battery. One of my mini's wasn't hitting as well as the other when I got it, (used). I replaced the original firing pin with a new gold one, The 510 nipple needed a good cleaning, because juice had gathered there and crudded it up. I had to re-tighten it after assembly because I hadn't got it quite tight enough first try, I was afraid of snapping the threads off. It still wasn't quite right, and the screw hole for the spring was the culprit, it had oxidized to a gray color. I used some never dull, and 99% isopropyl to clean it till shiny and put a little
No-ox-ID on the screw and the recess for it. This made all the difference in the world. It's the little things that can do it. As a note, I have found that I need to occasionally spin the battery a little bit on both my mini's, some of my batteries have little black arc pits on the nipples from the old contacts.

 

[Fuzzy Bruce]

I never spin a battery while firing but have found that once I have to spin them, they go to the flashlight box.

I did have a problem similar to yours. Tried everything. the problem was arcing and this would pit the positive side of the battery. Finally after trying everything I could think of, I pulled the spring. There was some off coloring on the beveled face of the body. It should be nice and shiny. My guess is dis-similar metals. spring screw and body. cleaned up the point where the screw head makes contact with a scratch pad. deoxit the whole spring and the screw hole and the problem went away.

It has been noted by Robert and others that unless you have a TRA, the point where the spring makes contact with the body has little or no conductivity unless you scrape away the finnish under the sprig base. The only real points are screw head to body and screw head to spring base.

 

[redeyedancer]

3 bottles of juice in a mini a day she should be using a grand . There is a problem for sure were it is would only be guessing on my end . Send it in I would be happy to fix it

 

[jifjifjif]

That seems off. Granted I run my little mini at 1.4-1.6Ω, I get through a three ml bottle on one battery. One of my mini's wasn't hitting as well as the other when I got it, (used). I replaced the original firing pin with a new gold one, The 510 nipple needed a good cleaning, because juice had gathered there and crudded it up. I had to re-tighten it after assembly because I hadn't got it quite tight enough first try, I was afraid of snapping the threads off. It still wasn't quite right, and the screw hole for the spring was the culprit, it had oxidized to a gray color. I used some never dull, and 99% isopropyl to clean it till shiny and put a little
No-ox-ID on the screw and the recess for it. This made all the difference in the world. It's the little things that can do it. As a note, I have found that I need to occasionally spin the battery a little bit on both my mini's, some of my batteries have little black arc pits on the nipples from the old contacts.

Yes, some of her batteries have some dark spots on the button top. I run them on some 200 sandpaper every few weeks to clean them up. I then use the deoxit on the batteries. Thanks for your post.

I never spin a battery while firing but have found that once I have to spin them, they go to the flashlight box.

I did have a problem similar to yours. Tried everything. the problem was arcing and this would pit the positive side of the battery. Finally after trying everything I could think of, I pulled the spring. There was some off coloring on the beveled face of the body. It should be nice and shiny. My guess is dis-similar metals. spring screw and body. cleaned up the point where the screw head makes contact with a scratch pad. deoxit the whole spring and the screw hole and the problem went away.

It has been noted by Robert and others that unless you have a TRA, the point where the spring makes contact with the body has little or no conductivity unless you scrape away the finnish under the sprig base. The only real points are screw head to body and screw head to spring base.

Perhaps sanding down to the raw aluminum under the spring would be a good idea. Thanks, Bruce.

3 bottles of juice in a mini a day she should be using a grand . There is a problem for sure were it is would only be guessing on my end . Send it in I would be happy to fix it

She prefers the mini because of its size. She's got little hands. Perhaps when I score a woodvil, I will lend her my Grand and send her mini in to you. Right now, we each only own one mod. Thanks, Rob.

 

[SteamStack]

Try 1000/2000 grit metal sand paper for the tops of the batteries. smoother means more sold contact.

Might want to take a loop and take a good look at the new contact pin.