A little update:
I was looking at the insulator on the Cyclone and found no visual damage on it. Took out my magnifying glass to be sure and I think I found the cause of my short.
Since this was a Cyclone with the higher feed hole, I had an extra feed hole drilled low to help in juice drainage. Right there on the 2nd feed hole was a small lump of metal. This was probably metal shaving from the drill that dropped into the post and got stuck there. Squonking eventually pushed up the metal shaving causing it to stick out of the feed hole and short the atty.
Took that burr out, removed the allen screw up top and blew through the tube on the bottom. Seems it's clear (for now).
The positive post twisting was due to the post not being pushed far enough into the deck. Took the flat side of my pliers on it and gently tapped the post into the bottom of the deck until the positive pin was just a tad from being flush with the 510's lip. Post is nice and tight now.
Rebuilt with a 0.75ohm 1.4mm micro coil with 0.34mm Kanthal. On my first Cyclone builds, I was struggling with a harsh vape with little to no flavor (just the acidic tones from my juice) that was almost like a dry burn. The cotton wick itself wasn't burnt so I assumed it was an airflow problem. Re-positioning the coil out closer to the edge of the deck towards the air hole solving the harsh vape issue but I was still getting muted flavors.
Played around with my AFC a bit to no avail. Since my setup worked so well with the RM2, I decided to compare what was different between the two atties. I noticed that the AFC cap was taller, giving a much larger chamber than the RM2. The stock Cyclone cap was closer in size to the RM2 so I decided to try that out. I drilled out the air hole to 1/16" to match my RM2 and replaced the AFC. Now I'm getting a little more flavor.
It seems a small micro coil might be leaving too much space within the AFC chamber killing the flavor. Maybe with larger coils or a dual micro setup this will work better for me but so far with my setup, the stock cap might be the way to go.
I'm still tweaking the build to get better flavor and throat hit. So far my RM2 is ahead on both departments. I'll vape on this coil today and tomorrow to see if using the coil would make it better (I find my coils to improve with use over a freshly built one). If not, I'm planning to rebuild the coil so that it is the same distance to the air hole and deck with my RM2. Hopefully I'll finally nail my ideal vape with the Cyclone.
