Mini Protank 2 Wick Mod

[5thcolumn]

Hello ECF.

This is my first post to the forum, I love how everyone here is so happy to not be smoking, and I am fairly excited about my first successful mod and figured I would share. I have been off the nasties for about 2 months and I suppose I have been following the normal progression. I started on a vuse ecig for about 10 days, and now am using a mini protank 2 on a vision spinner 2. Perhaps I will get into the fancier mech mods/coil building down the road.

But now I would like to explain my coil/wick mod for anyone who would like to try it. With the breadth of info on this forum I would be very surprised if something similar has not been posted. However, I discovered this on my own through trial and error.

I am relatively happy with this little tank. It has its ups and downs. The drawbacks I notice are airflow (I am very hesitant to take a drill to what is atm my only tank however), vapor production, flooding and tank size which I will discard as that is something we have to live with. Vapor production and the flooding issue though are amazingly improved with my simple mod.

In a nutshell I remove the rubber o-ring like grommet and the stem which will expose the coil. I remove the little "flavor wicks". I then take small chunk off a cotton ball. The amount is probably the hardest thing to figure out. It is substantially more then the little wicks but not so much that it overfills the coil well (for lack of a better term). I spin and stretch the cotton to maybe an inch long and maybe .75 to 1 mm thick. I then fold it in half and twist again, doubling thickness and halving the length. Place it carefully on top of the coil where the flavor wicks were. It should be long enough to protrude from the little holes that are normally occupied by the flavor wicks when the stem piece is replaced. However it should not be longer then the main wick and about the width of the coil itself (perhaps a hair wider). Before you reassemble be sure to wet the cotton with either pure VG or a nice thick e juice. Reassemble all pieces including rubber grommet.

Thats it!!! reinstall your coil. Take your normal priming puffs and you are ready to go!. You will notice an even tighter draw as the cotton is occupying more volume then the mini wicks you removed but I have been getting 3 fold vapor production and density. No flooding issues and longer coil life. I mix my juice with about 1/3rd pure vg so it is very thick, so you should have no problem using this setup with thick juices.

I hope someone finds this useful!

 

[godlovescopper]

Drip it. Trust me drip it.

 

[Alter]

You can also take those little stock flavor wicks and offset them so a bit is sticking out each end. I never liked cotton as flavor wicking I just bought some 1mm silica and used that. The cotton will expand and if too much is used will restrict your airflow. Cotton as a wicking material to use in the coil is a different story. Learn to rebuild that protank coil by removing the wicking, leaving the stock coil intact and add twisted cotton and your vape experience will drastically improve. Its easiest to do with a brand new head.

 

[Susan~S]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Glad to have you here!

Glad you have found a way to modify your wicks to get the vape you desire. Have you discovered that cleaning and dry burning your coils also helps improve the performance of the coils when they are all gunked up? If not, here's a video for you:

How to Clean & Dry Burn Kanger Coils

 

[5thcolumn]

Yeah I hear ya....

I will get mech down the road...but for now, for the sake of ease of travel, charging, being able to use it at work, at a moments notice and continuously a tank seems like the better option for me in general....Dont get me wrong I would love to chuck whole weather systems once in a while but as of now vaping is more a means to keep me off the nasties. I think I will get one more regulated mod with a new tank before I start playing with mech mods and RDAs

 

[5thcolumn]

hmmmm...

I thought about that Alter, and I will try it. If not tonight then in the morning. I will let you know my results. I have also considered rebuilding the little buggers, partly to save money but also because there is nothing more annoying then the local smoke shop being out of the 1.8ohm coils I prefer. Excited to try your suggestion

 

[5thcolumn]

thank you Susan,

I do use a similar technique...while the wick is still wet I pulse the coil and blow hard on it and it seems to clean it nicely I was amazed that coils I thought were dead came back to near new performance.

 

[edyle]

Cotton rewick once a day or 3
Dryburn once a week or 3
recoil once a month or 3.

 

[5thcolumn]

whoa...more info please...

are you saying if I rewick the coil itself with cotton i need to replace it once a day? I assume you twist and trim the frayed end?

 

[Susan~S]

I have also considered rebuilding the little buggers, partly to save money but also because there is nothing more annoying then the local smoke shop being out of the 1.8ohm coils I prefer. Excited to try your suggestion

Here's a video on rebuilding the coils and wicking them with cotton. You will need to have an ohm reader or digital multi-meter to measure your builds.

Mini Protank Micro Coil Rebuild

 

[5thcolumn]

nice!

I watched a vid from a guy called ray lo on rebuilding the pro tank coils but def watching this one, I didnt know he had one for protanks and I love riptrippers. Cracks me up, I watch some of his coil builds even though I dont have an RDA or mech

 

[edyle]

whoa...more info please...

are you saying if I rewick the coil itself with cotton i need to replace it once a day? I assume you twist and trim the frayed end?

You can wait till your silica wick starts falling apart, then pick it apart and take it out with a tweezers, then dryburn the coil to burn any gunk off.

Yes you can rewick the coil itself with cotton; unlike silica however, cotton can burn if you let it go dry, so just don't let it go dry.
you twist one end of the cotton to needle it through the coil; if it doesn't slide through then it's too much cotton.

Once you rewick the coil with cotton, it's a 5 minute job to rewick once a day; if you keep using the same wick for a week it would be flooding by then; in my usage it starts flooding typically about after day 3; sometimes within 1 day.

and yeah; you can trim the long ends off afterwards; some people try wrapping the ends around; I haven't found that to be usefull.

And for a wick on top, I tend to use a thin wick on top so that it doesn't expand and obstruct airflow.
That top wick serves the important function of reducing the likelyhood of your coil shorting out on the top spire when you put the spire back on.

 

[5thcolumn]

I have successfully re-wicked one of my coils with cotton....

I wicked the coil as photographed and before I read this thought about folding the cotton 180 degrees turning i tinto a one piece wick/flavor wick. I decided against this though and inserted the original flavor wicks, and its chuckin the vapor excellent. I would say better then with the cotton as the flavor wick and it seems to be maintaining a little better airflow.

OK, so flooding is why you rewick often. Makes sense. I notice that the coils in the stock configuration seem to flood like the Mississippi in short order. Thanks for the advice, I will be trying this setup for a while and see how she holds up!

 

[Alter]

Flooding is 1 of a few reasons to why you rewick but once you get the feeling of the kind of vape your suppose to get you'll notice a drop in performance and then you rewick the head. With cotton you usually don't need a flavor wick(s) at all unless your getting juice splatter in the mouth, thats user preference. I found that that silicone chimney also restricts juice flow with a cotton rewick so I flipped the chimney cap upside down and have had no problems with it flooding nor gurgling and I can vape my protanks right down to the last drop of juice.