change in protank coil heads?

[ws6guy]

Has anyone noticed a change in protank coils? I have 2 protanks that recently started to flood when I replaced the coils with new ones. One tank is worse than the other but before I purchased new coils the tanks would very rarely flood and now they flood constantly. Before I could vape until the tank was almost bone dry and now at most I can only use a half a tank. The juice will flood the battery connection and I start to suck juice up into the tip.

As a test I had some leftover 2.5 ohm coils from past protanks that have been broken. When I used these old stock of coils the tanks go back to normal with zero flooding. So I thought it may have been a bad batch of coils so I ordered some more through discount vapor and I'm back to the flooding. It seems that something might have changed slightly with their coils, has anyone else noticed this?

 

[jstjoehere]

Yes I rebuild pt2 coils for my aerotank. The first one I built flooded no matter what but the next one seemed to be ok. But I cant seem to get just the right draw like the old ones gave. Maybe its time to soak my air flow control lol. But I did have the one coil leak yesterday. Strange that you re ordered and had the same results. Maybe they changed something around the oring base or the oring itself. Maybe try an oring off of one of your old coil heads.

 

[DaveP]

My major gripe with Protank and Aspire heads is short life of one day or even less. The non-resistive legs that are silver soldered to the coil are breaking down at the solder joint. The resistance rises until a 2 ohm coil reads 4 ohms. Shortly after that, they read open as the leg separates from the coil.

I haven't experienced any sort of flooding. I use Kanger T3S heads in my Protanks and my Kanger Aerotank Mega. Flooding and leaking is a result of the flavor wicks allowing too much juice into the head. Once that happens there's nothing to stop the flood of juice into the coil. Past that point there's an open path down to the air hole in the bottom of the head. The o-ring should keep it from leaking out of the 510 socket, but still some juice can leak at times.

I vape 100% PG most of the time and it's thinner than anything that contains a percentage of VG. I add Humco VG in 10% and 20% levels to my 100% juice sometimes.

Flooding is mostly related to air flow. If the air flow is tight when you vape, suction becomes stronger against the flavor wicks that stick out of the side of the head. Gurgling is the first sign of tight vacuum. Fix the tight suction problem and you fix the flooding problem.

The cure is to buy the Kanger Protank air flow adapter. I have them on my Protanks and the Aerotank Mega comes with a version of it already installed. You just turn the ring on the Protank air flow adapter down to increase air flow and up to decrease. There's a series of holes around the adapter. As you turn the ring up or down, you expose or cover the air holes incrementally. Once you get it right you seldom have to change it.

It's about $5 from most any vendor and it replaces the bottom cap on a Protank or Aerotank.
Kanger Protank/Aerotank Airflow Control Valve

 

[ws6guy]

I just switched out o rings with an order coil. I noticed that when tightening the coil I can feel the resistance of the o ring compressing slightly. With the new(flooding) coils they tightened up immediately, seems that the old o rings might be fractionally thicker. We'll see how this pans out over the next few hours. If it doesn't work I'll try the ACV as I was thinking about one of the those anyway since the protanks have a more airy draw than I like, definitely not a tight suction.

 

[DaveP]

I just sent an email to Kanger Service USA describing the problem. I also included a YouTube video that demonstrates a cheap wire welding device that eliminates the need to silver solder the non-resistive legs to the resistive coil wire. I hope they take it under consideration.

 

[ws6guy]

I've ran through 2 tanks of juice since changing out the o-rings and it seems to have fixed the flooding issue. I only have 1 or 2 old coils left over so I hope the next batch of coils have batter o-rings since I'm not interested in rebuilding yet.

 

[DaveP]

I sat and re-coiled 5 heads while watching a movie yesterday. So far, all of them gurgle when vaped. I guess I didn't put enough cotton in the "flavor wick" to keep juice from over soaking the primary coil. This time I used cotton for the flavor wicks instead of a doubled 2mm silica strand that I usually use. I need to get some 4mm silica. Silica seems to prevent over feeding to the coil. My coil has a snug slip fit cotton strand, just like I always use.

 

[Panorama911]

I am trying a cotton strand through the coil and a 1 to 2mm silica wick over the top to see how that works....Kinda of a quasi Ekowool set up....more to follow....stay tuned!

 

[DaveP]

I am trying a cotton strand through the coil and a 1 to 2mm silica wick over the top to see how that works....Kinda of a quasi Ekowool set up....more to follow....stay tuned!

That's what worked for me. I think I used too much cotton in the flavor wick position and it fed too much juice to the cotton wicked coil. I rewicked all of them with 2mm silica (as I used to do) and they all vape fine with the silica rope for a flavor wick.