Yah I am thinking it was a fluke. It was a joye atty for sure. But its a little over 2 weeks now, and I got it from Thevaporpro.com. I am unsure of there policy. But I would rather just buy a 10 pk from vapor kings and be done with it.
I am not much of a return/ complainer. Unless something is really bad/wrong. I did use that one all the time. It was my fave. So I didn't really give it much time to rest. I am not worried at all as far as buying new attys goes. I knew I would have to replace them. And as far as my DH and I not buy cigs anymore we are still saving a .... load of cash.
On cleaning them... I blow them out. but I am not sure what else to do really. And I don't know what a dry burn is.
On the ejuice color... I had started using desert ship, I would consider that medium color. Every other liquid I have been using is clear.
Desert Ship is pretty run of the mill - that shoudn't have been the source of the problem. Especially at your vaping levels.
As far as basic atty cleaning goes there are three steps:
Blowing out the excess liquid as you are doing. But that alone isn't enough. That would be step one.
You would also blow out liquid if it seems like your vapor production has dropped off. That coil that heats up inside an atty isn't very big. And if it gets saturated with too much liquid it will have a difficult time producing vapor. It's one of those balance things. Too dry and you get nasty burnt taste. Too wet and that's actually counter-productive too. If the coil is over saturated things won't taste nasty, but you won't get as much vapor either.
Step two is rinsy rinsy rinsy with hot water. When you start looking at how to clean attys there are lot's of posts on ecf about this topic with lot's of different takes on it. But the most basic thing to do is rinse hot water through the atty to try to get the rest of the liquids out that you did not blow out in step one. If you have really hot tap water that works fine. Some folks go as far as putting them in simmering water. (Really hot, rapidly boiling water probably isn't a good idea.) Your next "highly technical tool" to add to the paper clip in your kit is a clothes pin. Clothes pin works great for holding onto attys while rinsing around in hot water.
Now blow, blow out as much water as you can. Perhaps even poking in there with a piece of paper towel to get extra water out. You don't want to use anything that would leave stuff in there. A Q-tip would be a no-no.
Now the dry burn. This is probably one of the better threads that discusses cleaning and dry burning:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/tips-tricks/69834-my-atty-resurrection-method.html
Basically, you are running the atty now with no cart attached and no liquid at all. WHAT? THAT'S BAD! Well, not if you are careful. After all, every time you hit that button to vape you are heating up the coil in your atty. The dry burn allows the coil to be heated up in order to burn off residue that has built up on it. No matter what, an atty isn't an atty unless it heats up - be it for vaping or cleaning.
Read that thread - it's long. The biggest thing about dry burning is to be careful. In this case less is always better than more. But after you have already blown out, rinsed & dried your atty, when you dry burn if you still get some nasty smelling vapor appearing inside - that's a sign of a gunked up atty coil.
The dry burn involves hitting the power button for short bursts - like a slow 3 count - stopping - and repeating. When you look down into the atty you want to see an orange glow at the base of that metal bridge in the middle. (You may want to dim the lights to see it - not kidding.) On a Joye 510 atty at the base of the bridge there are a couple holes that the orange glow will show through. If the atty is really dirty at first it will be hard to see any glowing because there will be vapor from dry burning in the way. As you repeat the vapor from the gunky residue will go away. When you see orange glow and aren't getting any more vapor it's done.
As I said: less is more. You never want to hold down the button until the atty is glowing white or really bright orange. That would be too hot and that's where you might burn out the atty coil in the process.
Rinse it very well once more, dry, and you are set to go.
I know that sounds like a lot. But this isn't an every day thing either. Once a week is what my vendor recommends. And it can be intimidating the first times you do it. Stay on the side of being cautious. And you can always stop and and ask questions if you aren't sure how the process is going.
Or just wait, and try it a few weeks from now too. I didn't start dry burning until after I blew out my first two attys.
Short term, at least rinse your attys out several times a week with hot water to help keep them from getting gunked up.
Rick
