I'm *exactly* where you are at.... okay, maybe not exactly, in which case my emphasizing the word was stuipid.. but anyways:
I started out with a 501 kit, with a fancy name brand stamped on the box for a premium $$. It worked pretty well, and although I didn't like refilling a cart every few tokes, it at least tasted okay and I was able to quit analogues. I literally had to fill a cart, which at first gave me a few minutes of heavy vaping, and then had to pull it off, put a few drops in the cart & on the atty, then put it back on, take a few hits, and over and over. I read spent months of 8+hrs a day reading past ECF posts, watching vids, trying every cart mod & filler mods known, plus some of my own.Then I ordered some more atty's, and my Mother (a non-smoker, but a scientist interested in the positive aspects of nicotine) bought a non-brand name, but "guaranteed" genuine Joye 510 starter kit from a very well known, very trusted supplier. The atty's she received in her starter, and the ones I got (same company, ordered within days of each other) were... horked (technical term).
They were burning something in the atty, getting so hot that you couldnt hold the e-cig, and emitting a terrible burn plastic smoke. (no, it wasn't primer fluid). I suspect that in addition to burning _something_ in the atty, they might have been burning the end of the plastic carts, and in the cases of my blue foam mods, they definitely burnt the blue foam, visibly. I tried washing them out, and drying them multiple times, going so far as to use expensive anhydrous solvents to clean. Tried increasing airflow in order to keep temp down. No luck.
Most people would just chalk it up to a couple of bad atty's. At the time there were few reports of bad attys, and fewer, if any, reports of atty's overheating- afterall (some ECF'ers pointed out) some people were driving these atty's at 6v. I questioned my findings, afterall I had never purposely smoked burnt plastic before, but when I saw the burnt foam, I knew things were awry- because like every man who had been a naughty boy, a certainly knew what burnt plastics _looked_ like.
(And no, it wasn't only on the blue foam mods that these atty's helping me smoke polymers with, as the foam mod were an attempt to _fix_ the original problem of the atty's burning something.) Anyway, where most would have chalked it up to a few bad atty's and marched on, all of this was a pretty big financial hit to me. My health has been failing for years (at the time unrelated to smoking), and I'm unable to work more than a few hrs a week, and those are done on an old laptop from my bed.
So finances are
*tight*.
In the meantime while trying to futz with the horked atty's, with my original attys & carts, which weren't nor ever did wick, I had given up on removing carts, putting 2-3 drops which would overfill them, putting them back on, vaping those drops, etc- and had gone to dripping directly on the atty and "stovepiping" off the atty. This was before drip-tips were widely available, or widely used. You could buy fancy metal ones from one or two semi-obscure vendors, but by this time I was losing my patience with the whole thing.
Eventually I just threw all my juices (20+), the various 510 parts from my and my mothers e-cig parts into a box, and went back to analogues... well, not the usual analogues, I ryo/myo, so my cig spending is significantly less than that of the average smoker.
Although my mother totally lost interest (and has a cough that started with her inhaling burn plastic, and has not cleared up after months- granted the relationship between the ecig experiment & the cough is only casual, its still disturbing), a tragedy since she's a scientist connected with drug trials. and could have been a powerful ally in the fight to keep these things legal- I had not lost interest, and kept up with the "state of the vape". Dripping became commonplace, better attys were coming out, etc.
Recently I was diagnosed with further health problems, these ones being at least affected by my smoking. So I'm making another run at vaping. I had wanted to go with a provari to maximize my options, but by the time I scraped together the $$, there was a 3wk wait, and I simply can't wait that long due to health reasons. I had considered trying to purchase someones space in the queue, but it seemed to complicated. The ego-T's were starting to hit the market and get good review, so I went with that. I should receive early next week. I don't know how well the tank thing will work, and I'm not in the mindset that thats my only option. I was swayed not only by the tank system, but also because its a relatively powerful battery with 510 threads, which leaves me a wide world of options. If the tanks don't work, I'll try combinations of drip tips & various attys (eGo mega, 510 LR, 306, etc), the various cartomizers, etc. For what I paid for the eGo-T, i got into a 3+v batt system, plus some attys, charger, etc. I couldn't have done any better by going with a commercially avail mod PV. Sure, I probably would have preferred a fancy provari/provape/GLV/GG/etc/etc., but my funds are limited as is my time. I'm good biologist, a competent chemist, but a piss-poor engineer; had I had any skills I would have rather made my own mod, but it wasn't an option for my (shaky, creaky, swollen) hands to try to make.
Anyway, that's my similar story- and that's my solution. I can only hope that it works, or that while I'm trying to make it work, I end up winning an even more adaptable PV
I have a scant few weeks to quit smoking, and get my PFT's up, and my blood pressure down for surgery. On the plus side, my docs are all for vaping. I know smoking isnt allowed in the O.R. .. I wonder about vaping
(j/k!)
