Glass vs plastic and flavor ghosting?

[Kitty1217]

Hello I'm new to vaping and had a few questions...

I started off with a regular EGo-T and Smok RDC...and then switched batteries to an ITaste VV. One of my wicks were starting to burn the juice so I switched out the wick (atomizer? ) and primed it and everything, cleaned out my tank...and ended up getting mystery, "The last three flavors you used" hits.

I bought a Kanger Protank Mini since I was still having the issue no matter how many times I washed the tank, and the issue is eliminated and I'm cleaning the tank more often (I did not know how often to clean it...)

How frequently should I clean tanks? I know to at least rinse it out extremely well between flavors, but should I do a deep cleaning at any point in time?

Will the glass tank help prevent flavor ghosting? As I've said, I'm new and still figuring things out!

 

[DavidOck]

Hi Kitty, and welcome to ECF.

It's possible the flavors you use have "attacked" the poly tube of your topper. Some (not many, but enough!) will cause the poly to deteriorate, and the flavor will stay in the tube no matter what you do. Flavors that are not "tank crackers" generally won't stick around, but you may need to rinse it several times.

Possible, too, that the used coil is sufficiently "gunked" with residue from those flavors that it's bringing along the previous one - but changing coils should have eliminated that.

The PT mini is glass, so no concerns about flavor migration there. (Ghosting - nice term for it!) That, and no concerns about tank crackers is why glass / pyrex is so popular. Of course, it's more likely to break if dropped... But taking it all the way apart and rinsing well under hot running water works fine.

When I use clearo type toppers, I'll generally clean the tank and dry burn the coil every couple fills, although with the mini, since it holds less than the "full size" versions, you might be fine with every 3 - 4 fills. Or if you're changing flavors, of course!

 

[Kitty1217]

Hi Kitty, and welcome to ECF.

It's possible the flavors you use have "attacked" the poly tube of your topper. Some (not many, but enough!) will cause the poly to deteriorate, and the flavor will stay in the tube no matter what you do. Flavors that are not "tank crackers" generally won't stick around, but you may need to rinse it several times.

Possible, too, that the used coil is sufficiently "gunked" with residue from those flavors that it's bringing along the previous one - but changing coils should have eliminated that.

The PT mini is glass, so no concerns about flavor migration there. (Ghosting - nice term for it!) That, and no concerns about tank crackers is why glass / pyrex is so popular. Of course, it's more likely to break if dropped... But taking it all the way apart and rinsing well under hot running water works fine.

When I use clearo type toppers, I'll generally clean the tank and dry burn the coil every couple fills, although with the mini, since it holds less than the "full size" versions, you might be fine with every 3 - 4 fills. Or if you're changing flavors, of course!

What's the best way to dry burn without messing up my coil?

 

[DavidOck]

With single bottom coils - i.e. your PT mini - wiggle off the chimney from the coil base. You'll see two (probably) thin strands of wick laying on top of the coil, called the "flavor wicks." Remove those. You may be able to reuse them, but I toss 'em. Now you can see the coil itself, with the mail wick going through it. Do NOT disturb the main wick unless you plan on replacing it - and I'd not recommend that until or unless you decide you want to get into rebuilding coils.

Put the base back on a battery. If an adjustable (Spinner, VV3 or similar), set the power low - maybe about 3.8 volts or 5 watts to start.

The pulse fire - maybe a 3 or 4 second pulse - with about the same time off as on. Repeat. At first, once it starts to heat up, you'll see vapor coming off. As it starts to dry out it will "bake" the coil, burning off the gunk. Eventually you'll start to see the individual turns of the coil. When they all show up on a pulse, you're nearly there.

Let it cool down, then take it off the battery and re-rinse.

At that point, you can set it aside to dry and finish off later, or just go ahead and put it together with some water in the wick. Won't hurt to do that, although the first few vapes will be mostly water vapor, and tasteless. But that goes away quickly.

I use 100% cotton yarn as a replacement for the flavor wicks. Other organic material can be used as well. And some who use thicker juices report no problems leaving them out, but it may leak. So you can experiment there. Replace the chimey, trim the new flavor wicks to be even with main wicks, and it's darn near good as new.

You can also google up something along the lines of "dry burn kanger coil" and find utubes and links back to lots of ECF posts on it.

 

[EBates]

This is the cleaning process that I use with Single Coil PT heads.

Soak in 91% Isopropyl alcohol or everclear over night or until I get 5-6 to clean.
Rinse throughly with warm tap water forcing water into the wick area.
Towel dry and blow out any water.
Mount the head on a tank base.
Remove the gasket and stem.
Remove the flavor wick(s).
Mount the tank base with the atomizer head on your PV.
Dry burn 6 watts, 5 seconds on/off. Repeat until coils are all turning red and wick is clean.
Blow the burned off crud away.

Hold the flavor wick with tweezer while burning them with a lighter or torch until wick is clean.
-Place the flavor wick back on top of the coil.
Or
-Replace the flavor wick with the material of your choice.

Reinstall the stem and gasket.


Also when cleaning your tanks, use a pipe cleaner to clean the tank chimney tube and drip tip.

 

[FallenRawToast]

Just for fun.. when we say "clean the tank" we mean all of it. Mouth piece, base, tank, all of it. Just incase there was confusion.

Anyways as far as cleaning it, when not changing the juice... that is up to you. For some juices I clean more frequently than others. It really depends on how much residue a juice leaves behind. Lets say for example, if a juice is a nice light golden amber color in the bottle, but is starting to get the color of pancake syrup in the tank, well then I know it is time for me to clean the tank and coil.

 

[pete2275]

I'm appreciating the info, keep it comin'!

 

[Susan~S]

Here's some videos for you. Save your old coils. One day you might like to learn to re-build them.

1. How to Clean & Dry Burn... Kanger ProTank II & Mini ProTank II, Protank 2 Tutorial
2. Mini Protank Micro Coil Rebuild