Well I can offer one tip of advise so far - don't wait until you have a whopping 35 cartomizers to clean and rebuild. Sheesh it's taking me awhile, especially this being my first time and all. We are leaving for a long trip soon and I thought it would be good but dang it's taking me awhile. So far, cartos have been soaked, filling has been removed, cartos have been washed (3-5 min each under hot water), filler has been cleaned. Some burned patches for sure but not too bad, and those where on VG juices so it will be good to cut that out and have less filler anyhow.
Now tonight will be dry burns and rinse, tomorrow re-assembly, the next day filling. One thing I noticed - there had been a batch of subpar cartos, silver with gold bottoms. Now I know why, they had no inner filler whatsoever. So some poor person here who kept saying his were leaking, everyone was giving him advise - I wonder if he may have had these duds. I had only used them in
tanks and it's a wonder they worked at all. The filler is also scratchier and bumpier. I also noticed that the colored cartomizers have a slightly thinner filler than the original blacks I got back in March. Not saying that's good or bad, just noticing the difference between different batches. Two duds that I had there also had no inner filler (Eric sent me 2 replacements, which is awesome.)
One question before I begin the next steps - for the silver cut cartomizers with no inner filler - can I just put fluval back in and again have no inner cotton layer, if they are going to be used in tanks? I don't have time to order the stuff on Eric's site, we're leaving Sun. Or, can I use just blue foam? Any tips mightily appreciated. I will be sure to post my results!