Follow up questions...

[Kakamouth]

Ok so a bit more time has gone by and I'm left with a few questions regarding e cig / juice quality...

In the past two months I've had two atomizers die ( near constant heavy use ) one of them pop'd on me day one the other just kind of puttered out. I also have a pair of batteries that last all of about 45 minutes down from the original 2-2.5 hours when originally purchased.

From what I've read ecig parts can be fairly problematic but I still don't have much personal experience with the products to form an opinion. Should I be looking toward a differant e-cig or is a battery & atty per month par for the course? Even at that rate it takes less than 3 days of vaping to recoup the costs vs traditional smoking but I'd still like a better idea of what to expect.

My only other question for the time being is regarding e-juice. I have six differant 15ml PG juices all at various states of empty. Most of them look "yellowish" with a few being a bit darker and all taste basicly like you would expect them to taste. That said I thought I had a fairly reasonable understanding of what juices should look & taste like so I started branching out...

I grabbed a 50/50 PG/VG bottle... and unlike the previous bottles this minthol is absolutely clear. Along with that it only has a hint of flavor ( which could be left over from the pg menthol I was using ). Did I just get a bad batch of juice where they forgot to add flavor or is this common for VG juices?

Thanks again for any feed back you may be able to provide!

 

[dormouse]

VG dulls TH, irritation, and flavor. If you want juices for 50% of more VG, maybe ask for extra flavor if your vendor offers that (FreedomSMokeUSA does). Or try a vendor that specializes in VG juices.

Re attys and batteries - what batteries, what atty and resistance?

Batteries should be good for 150 recharges. Chinese usually say around 300, but a vendor says it is more like 150.
Auto batteries - you may kill them before that. And their switches can sometimes turn on from wind or vibration and use up juice themselves if you leave the atty or carto attached.

I mostly use cartomizers so I haven't killed an atty yet. Do you clean your attys? When they get gunked up you may try harder to get a good drag and that can lead to overheatng them. Very constant vapers often need to alternate between vaping 2 units to not overheat the batteries (can shorten their life) and not overheat the attys.

 

[Hoosier]

A month on an atty is fair. I average less, but I will absent-mindly keep vaping when I should be adding more juice and/or switching to another.

Battery charge time does degrade. I ran about a dozen standard batteries into the ground before I finally went with a battery mod. Since then I have only killed half that number of 18650's in 3 times the length of time. Currently replacing those dead ones with even better ones.

Juices darken over time. I attribute it to oxidation of nicotine. Don't know if I'm right, but it let's me sleep at night. VG can mute some flavors and some folks get distracted by its natural sweetening effect. (And others never notice it)

Reads like your off to a good start.

 

[knobbysmoo]

kakamouth, you could try an inexpensive box mod with cartomizers. That way you can just buy batteries as needed and reuse the cartomizers until they die... (I have some that have been alive for months and the batteries can be really cheap)

 

[Kakamouth]

Thanks for the fast responces gang. I'm using a "store brand" 510 kit which has apparently been canceled as the store no longer offers it or any of the parts for it, having joye series 510's for sale instead. It sounds like the batteries that came with the kits aren't quite up to snuff ( I might have gotten 60 charges on them ) but in light of the discontinuation it's a moot point.

Deffinately need to look a bit harder at the various battery mods before the end of the month as I doubt the remaining batteries will last much longer than that. Thank you again for all the feedback, having no points of refrence of my own makes determining product quality difficult.

 

[dormouse]

I think some juices darken over time due to water and alcohol in the mix, especially juices with higher VG which may have been thinned to make them flow better. And I think certain flavors like the few that are oils are thinned w/ alcohol as are ethyl maltol sweetener crystals and menthol crystals.