Help with protank 2: driving me crazy

[Mcnuggits]

Hi there! New to the forums. Been vaping on and off for a couple of years now mostly with disposables. Been having a love hate relationship with them. Disposable ecigs seem to be really pricy with the way i smoke them so i decided at some point to get an ego-t upgrade battery and been playing with vivi novas and recently saw my buddy using a kanger protank 2 and loved it much more since i got nice thick vapor using a 1.6 and 1.8 ohm. Now i finally go and buy one and im not sure if its the battery ( he is using a ego winder variable voltage) as opposed to my 3/4 volt egot upgrade. Not sure if that has anything to do with it. Both coils produce a weak vape for me. Again i bought this a day ago and barely used it last night. I was very dissapointed then all of a sudden hours later it started producing this pleasant pop sound and started churning out super vapor clouds. Woke up this morning and its back to being like it was out of the box: weak and disappointing.

Maybe my google-fu is weak but ive been searching for answers and found none. I even tried removing the flavor wick (wich is a little better) but now my tank floods and the smoke is less than stellar.
Any help is appreciated im at my wits end and broke down and bought a pack of camels out of frustration.
Many bummers

 

[Isx15man]

I some times have that issue and found simply to remove the cap on the bottom of the protank and unscrew the coil and reseat it and make sure it's real tight and screw the cap back on then it's fine. You need to have the flavor wicks in there or as you seen it will flood.


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[Isx15man]

Also make sure your battery and tank contacts are clean.


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[smittytoo]

My mini kanger protank 2 died on me today, so I got a new coil out and started to unscrew
the old one and it was sloppy loose. Tightened it up and everything was rosy, but like yours
it seems to want to vape awhile before it works right. I have found that if I don't let the juice
get more than about a third of the way down before I top it off it works a lot better.

 

[old_geezer]

Your 1.6 1.8 coils should work ok as far as the resistance goes. If you want real clouds sacrifice one of the coils and go to youtube and look up how to rebuild it with cotton. I've got a couple of Protank II's and a couple Mini's. For some reason I keep using EVOD's. I think it's because they are cheap enough I can just switch them around and rebuild them as needed. 10 cheap EVODS from fleabay, rebuild 5 and I can always find something that blows clouds
- Joe

 

[dielonnn]

just got a protan k 2 but its a mini and I love it, such better vapor taste annd thicker clouds than my old clearoMizer, I Love That Its abottom feeding 1 2 so I don't have to twist and twirl it all the time

 

[Mcnuggits]

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to help a dude out!

For starters i put the flavor wick back on. Contacts are clean i clean the inside out with a qtip about once a week. Tried unscrewing the coil and reseating multiple times lol. Im seriously considering maybe changing out the wick for cotton like old_geezer suggests.
On that note i think it's pretty ridiculous that a brand new tank and it's 2 coils are acting up and i have to go through all this. Like i said i tried one before and he never did anything but take it out of the box and fill it up and it was great and iv'e been wanting one ever since.

All i want is that loud pop sound when i hit the damn thing (i don't know if that's normal or not but whenever it happens i get a really good hit).

Any other ideas are welcome. I'll be sure to update after i rewick to cotton if that helped at all.
Whole reason i went with this is for painless fill and smoke then change out the coil head every week or so and this is far from painless.

Again thank you very much for your time and any other suggestions are welcome. Gonna fiddle with this until i get a new coil mailed and hope that maybe these were just defective and chalk it up to bad luck.

 

[edyle]

Hi there! New to the forums. Been vaping on and off for a couple of years now mostly with disposables. Been having a love hate relationship with them. Disposable ecigs seem to be really pricy with the way i smoke them so i decided at some point to get an ego-t upgrade battery and been playing with vivi novas and recently saw my buddy using a kanger protank 2 and loved it much more since i got nice thick vapor using a 1.6 and 1.8 ohm. Now i finally go and buy one and im not sure if its the battery ( he is using a ego winder variable voltage) as opposed to my 3/4 volt egot upgrade. Not sure if that has anything to do with it. Both coils produce a weak vape for me. Again i bought this a day ago and barely used it last night. I was very dissapointed then all of a sudden hours later it started producing this pleasant pop sound and started churning out super vapor clouds. Woke up this morning and its back to being like it was out of the box: weak and disappointing.

Maybe my google-fu is weak but ive been searching for answers and found none. I even tried removing the flavor wick (wich is a little better) but now my tank floods and the smoke is less than stellar.
Any help is appreciated im at my wits end and broke down and bought a pack of camels out of frustration.
Many bummers

Sounds like flooding issues; works good when wick is wet, but when wick is flooded cloud gets weak, tank gets hot;
to confirm, turn tank upside down while holding fire button and listen for the popping sound.

cotton rewick.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blogs/edyle/6350-faq-1-what-tank-new-user.html

 

[Mcnuggits]

Tried this and though the popping sound isn't the same i get a considerably bigger hit if i smoke upside down. My gf thinks it's hilarious to see me doing this but it works (even tho i probably look ridiculous). Gonna store it upside down and try to smoke it holding it horizontally with a tilt up. Seems to be doing the trick but im sure this is not working as intended but it will get the job done til i try something new. Flooding is less now since i put the flavor wick back in. Read somewhere it was supposed to be better for people using 100% vg. Guess im going to be taking a crash course and buying a couple tools so i can learn to rewick and rebuild a coil.

Heh. I didn't want to go down this rabbit hole but i feel i have no choice.
Thanks again guys and see you around.

 

[edyle]

Tried this and though the popping sound isn't the same i get a considerably bigger hit if i smoke upside down. My gf thinks it's hilarious to see me doing this but it works (even tho i probably look ridiculous). Gonna store it upside down and try to smoke it holding it horizontally with a tilt up. Seems to be doing the trick but im sure this is not working as intended but it will get the job done til i try something new. Flooding is less now since i put the flavor wick back in. Read somewhere it was supposed to be better for people using 100% vg. Guess im going to be taking a crash course and buying a couple tools so i can learn to rewick and rebuild a coil.

Heh. I didn't want to go down this rabbit hole but i feel i have no choice.
Thanks again guys and see you around.

Yep this all sounds very familiar to me; used to do alot of that months ago;

The coil head is at the bottom of the tank and it has two holes; so you have holes in the bottom of your tank; so naturally liquid tends to leak out due to gravity.
One way to stop leaking is to stuff lots off wick in there; that stops leaking, but if you chain vape the liquid doesnt soak in fast enough and you get dry hits.
If you could put a piece of sponge in there, it would fill the hole to prevent leaking but be absorbent enough to keep soaked enough for the coil; but you dont want to have sponge on a hot coil
So : Cotton !!! Loose cotton acts like sponge.
The silica wick is more like a cloth material; it doesn't expand like cotton to fill the holes.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blogs/edyle/6350-faq-1-what-tank-new-user.html

theres a trick to figureing out how much cotton to use but with some trial and error you figure it out.
In my case
- I start with about a 3 inch length of cotton,
- about 1 inch twisted to run it through the coil,
- then tug gently and maybe twist a bit to thread the loose part of the cotton into the coil,
- then wrap 1 one side (I usually use the loose side ) of the cotton around and back over as a top wick;
(tried wrapping both symmetrically but found that didnt work as well.)
- put the spire on, and clip off the excess cotton with sissors.

 

[NealBJr]

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to help a dude out!

For starters i put the flavor wick back on. Contacts are clean i clean the inside out with a qtip about once a week. Tried unscrewing the coil and reseating multiple times lol. Im seriously considering maybe changing out the wick for cotton like old_geezer suggests.
On that note i think it's pretty ridiculous that a brand new tank and it's 2 coils are acting up and i have to go through all this. Like i said i tried one before and he never did anything but take it out of the box and fill it up and it was great and iv'e been wanting one ever since.

All i want is that loud pop sound when i hit the damn thing (i don't know if that's normal or not but whenever it happens i get a really good hit).

Any other ideas are welcome. I'll be sure to update after i rewick to cotton if that helped at all.
Whole reason i went with this is for painless fill and smoke then change out the coil head every week or so and this is far from painless.

Again thank you very much for your time and any other suggestions are welcome. Gonna fiddle with this until i get a new coil mailed and hope that maybe these were just defective and chalk it up to bad luck.

Rebuilding the coils are a bit easier than you think. Even though there's not as much vapor as some of my dedicated RBAs, the flavor is certainly there. I'd suggest getting some 32 gauge kanthal, some organic cotton, and a straight pin and recoil it from the start. I know, it sounds like it's a lot of trouble, but once you get the hang of it, you can do it fairly quick. I wouldn't do it without an ohm meter though, since it helps in MANY ways.

Why do I suggest all this? Well, chances are your battery doesn't provide the same power his does. non VV batteries are stuck at a particular level. If your battery is weak, try going lower ohms. For the price of a a few coils, you could buy the supplies to rebuild your coil at least a hundred times. Not only that, but you can customize the vape to YOUR liking, not the factory settings. I have about five protank coils. I'll bring my supplies in the living room, and about halfway through the show, I'll have five rebuilt coils.

Yes, that "pop" is a good thing for me too. IT means the juice is so hot it's boiling, and that was a bubble that burst in the middle of your wick. It's also the main reason I switched to cotton. The vibration from that pop scared me... will that break off any silica? Chances are, nothing is wrong, but I don't like taking chances. Besides, I swore up and down I couldn't taste the difference between cotton and silica. I switched to cotton for my RBAs and used it extensively for a few months. Later, I tried to go back to Silica, and I could taste the silica on EVERY build I tried. I'm still a firm believer that silica wicks vertically better than cotton, so I still use it, but rarely.

 

[NealBJr]

Tried this and though the popping sound isn't the same i get a considerably bigger hit if i smoke upside down. My gf thinks it's hilarious to see me doing this but it works (even tho i probably look ridiculous). Gonna store it upside down and try to smoke it holding it horizontally with a tilt up. Seems to be doing the trick but im sure this is not working as intended but it will get the job done til i try something new. Flooding is less now since i put the flavor wick back in. Read somewhere it was supposed to be better for people using 100% vg. Guess im going to be taking a crash course and buying a couple tools so i can learn to rewick and rebuild a coil.

Heh. I didn't want to go down this rabbit hole but i feel i have no choice.
Thanks again guys and see you around.

Actually, that's a sign that your wicks are getting too saturated. That could be caused by a few things....

1) Juice too thin... switch to a higher VG juice.
2) you're drawing too hard... try not to inhale as hard.
3) airflow is too tight. It creates more of a negative vacuum if your airflow is too tight.


BTW, there's plenty of room down this hole... Welcome to the rabbit hole.

 

[Mcnuggits]

You guys have no idea how grateful i am for all the help. Ordered some kanthal wire and looking forward to bumbling about making a coil. For now i replaced the flavor wick with a similar sized piece of cotton (out of desperation since i woke up this morning and it still hit like crap) and it hits a million times better and flooding hasn't happened all morning. This will definitely make it tolerable while i wait for shipping.
Looking forward to being able to focus on my fixation with expelling ridiculous amounts thick vapor and maybe graduate to some suggestions that were made for that. Peeking at mechanical mods on and off for a bit and it all looks way too interesting and i know it's definitely somewhere i want to go.

For the record i was a bit apprehensive on joining the forums since usually on others it takes a million years to get a response and usually i can figure it out by the time an answer is posted but you guys were the quickest iv'e ever seen lol. So far iv'e learned something from everyones post. Looking forward to sticking around and learning more! Go big or go home, right?

 

[edyle]

After a week you will need to take out that cotton topwick, and dryburn the silica wick and coil.

 

[Lurch]

Hey, if I can build a coil, anybody can!!!

 

[Mcnuggits]

After a week you will need to take out that cotton top wick, and dry burn the silica wick and coil.

Yeah, hopefully it wont even be that long. I tried dry burning my wick since it seemed really saturated but my coils never even come close to a glow. I hear it sizzle and feel heat but you wouldn't know by looking at it... I JUST bought them a couple days ago.
I want to say it's my battery but aside from this i have no other reason to believe so.
I'm off work and been dorking out on the computer for the better part of the day with the battery plugged into a usb port and been punishing that poor ignite button.refilled a couple times. Am i being too hard on it?

 

[edyle]

After a week you will need to take out that cotton top wick, and dry burn the silica wick and coil.

Yeah, hopefully it wont even be that long. I tried dry burning my wick since it seemed really saturated but my coils never even come close to a glow. I hear it sizzle and feel heat but you wouldn't know by looking at it... I JUST bought them a couple days ago.
I want to say it's my battery but aside from this i have no other reason to believe so.
I'm off work and been dorking out on the computer for the better part of the day with the battery plugged into a usb port and been punishing that poor ignite button.refilled a couple times. Am i being too hard on it?

the coil wont turn red until after it boils off all liquid; you will get the smell and smoke when it starts to get really hot then when its all dried out it will glow red.

 

[Mcnuggits]

Ah ok. I keep feeling like im going to scorch the wick but i see parts of the coil light up now. Doing it like in the video. Just realized while doing it that i don't know why im doing it exactly.

 

[edyle]

Ah ok. I keep feeling like im going to scorch the wick but i see parts of the coil light up now. Doing it like in the video. Just realized while doing it that i don't know why im doing it exactly.

It cleans the silica wick by burning everything off;
after a week of use, the wick will be black and taste burnt.
Dryburning turns the black wick white. It's a sight to see for the first time.

 

[Mcnuggits]

Preemptively answered another question , nice! Thanks again bud!