I spoke a tad too soon! It figures after I finish writing into the forum, I open a new cart, fill with liquid and have the same problem! I'm getting a burned taste. I grabbed the previous cartridge, put a few drops of liquid in it and started vaping, and POOF the burned taste was gone. Hmmmm.... I put the new cart in the atomizer tube, and start vaping and a few puffs and the burned flavor came back again.
Therefore, I was able to conclude the following:
1. It wasn't the battery
2. It wasn't the juice
3. It wasn't the atomizer
Therefore it had to be the cartridge!
I then proceeded to pull the silicone cap off the cart that gave me the good vape, rinse it off and put it on the cart that had liquid on it. Still a burned taste. For grins, I took the new silicone cap and put it on the old cart and started vaping. The burned taste was gone!
I've now concluded that I had a bad cartridge. I rinsed the old cartridge out, poured the new liquid into the old cart and started vaping, and everything was working again.
But... the question remains: How do I fix a cart that's causing a burned taste? What is causing a burned taste in a new cartrdige?
I grabed some liquid with a good amount of color to it (Raspberry). I put some in the troubled cart put the silicone cap on it and put it in my atomizer. I turned the eGo battery off (5 clicks in 2 seconds). I then tried to draw from the cart. After various strengths of draws from soft to viciously hard, I noticed that there was no air bubbles going back into the cart, thereby, the liquid wasn't going through the wick and atomizer coil to heat up and produce the vapors.
The whole eGo system works in the same way a reverse vaccum works. You draw through the mouth piece which should send liquid through the hole on the bottom, however, in order for the vaccum to be complete, there needs to be somewhere on the cartridge that neutralizes the pressure. A-HA! I found the secret to the eGo cart! (I needed to put my Bi-Focals on for this one!)
If you take an empty eGo cart and turn it where the mouth piece is down, you are looking at the cap part of the cartridge. The atomizer tube looks perfectly round. However, the cart is round on 2 opposite sides, and flat on the other 2 opposite sides. If you follow the flat sides of the cart, they lead up to the mouth piece of the cart. There should be openings on each side of this flat part leading into the mouth part of the cart again. This completes the air flow for the cart.
Ok, are you following me here? A quick recap of air flow:
You inhale through the mouth piece.
Negative air pressure is applied down the flat sides of the cart
Liquid gets pulled into the wick via vaccum through the bottom hole of the cartridge through the atomizer assembly.
The wick puts liquid on the coil heating the liquid and creating the vapor.
The vapor travels in the tube along the flat side of the cartridge back to the mouth piece.
The mouth piece delivers the vapors.
Ok, great wiz-kid, I took physics in college, but that still doesn't solve the burned taste!
What is causing the burned taste is the vaccum is incomplete! The openings on the flat side of the cart are either blocked, closed, or not large enough to complete the air flow cycle described above.
So how did I fix the problem?
First I took an 18 gague needle and made sure the openings were big enough between the flat part of the cart and the covering flap. Be careful not to break the side coverings over the return or you could get too much vapors or liquid and cause leaking. Also, be careful not to bend those flaps, or you won't be able to fit the cart back into the atomzier tube. One side wasn't fully opened after trying to poke holes into the small part between the "flap" and the air hole openings, so I took my famous utility tool (a small thin pointy blade of my Swiss Army Knife) and gently sliding it down to make sure there was a decent opening.
I put liquid back into the cart and TA-DA! I was vaping without any burned flavor!
I hope this helps some people.
