Need some advice...

[Jeann]

Hi all,

hope you are all doing well and being verry happy .

am doing good, just real life keeps me away from the forums. been a happy vaper for a year now thanks to the wonderfull reo mini's and still not smoking for almost 6 months

the thing is, since a couple of weeks am struggling with my batts (the AW's) performing weak and run too fast out of power. we have around 10 in use and every now and then i test them and usually 1,2 or 3 perform ok for 2 hours while normally they do for 4 to 5 hours. so those i replace for new ones. however this time all of them were performing weak and run out in 2 to 2.5 hours, also the 4 new ones i had still in storage. so i took a look at my order history and it turned out i bought them 11 months ago. so i thought they were just too old and i orderd 15 new ones and took 10 of them in use.

and quess what, same thing, performing weak within half an hour and need a freshly charged one in one to 2 hours

some data:
they come off the Pila charger with 4.10V - 4.15V
half an hour later taste and TH diminish while they still have 3.85V - 3.90V
another half to an hour later vapor diminsh too while they still have 3.65V - 3.70V
by now I want a freshly charged one but if i continue to vape I need another (frustrating) hour
to get it down to around 3.55V when i used to get to the point to want to change batts

so basicly 2.5 hours without having much vaping fun, while it used to be 4 hours with being in vaping heaven all the time...

so i mailed the shop where i been bying my batts (all of them) today and told them, and got a reply witch basicly say that this is unkown for these batts and that there must be something else goning on...okay...i relpyed with about the same data as above as well as telling them that we use the mini's with the joytech/totally wicked 510 regular atty's. and that i also tested the atty's on having 2.2 ohms. oh and that i could try to clean the contactpoints with vodka in the mods. this i did, also the ends of all the batts, the Pila charger and even the spacer magnets...oh and i also put some of that grey stuff back on the firing pin...still weak performance. so for now i have to wait for their reply, as it's now vriday night that might take a bit.

have you guys/gals any thoughts?

at the moment am having more fun with dripping an over a year old ego batt with an equally old atty witch i occasionally use for taste testing

 

[sashwa]

Do you have another charger you could use so to rule out a problem with you Pila?

 

[Jeann]

i wish... hmm, think part of me refuse to beleve that the Pila is dying as it alway did his job so perfectly, still it's close to a year old i think. maybe i should buy another charger, hard one, coz i don't need one...unless it's dead...

 

[whatitstrue]

Couple questions have you tried different attys and are you using the same juice as before.

Just an FYI I ussually change out my batts at between 3.7v and 3.8v and that is with a 1.5ohm atty. Its very rare I take them down to 3.55v.

I know you cleaned the conacts with vodka but a good hot water bath followed by an IPA cleaning of the contacts and re-noaloxing might help?

 

[whatitstrue]

Its also been suggested arround here to run a nail file across the firing pin real quick to help clean off any oxidation and increase poor performance.

 

[whatitstrue]

i wish... hmm, think part of me refuse to beleve that the Pila is dying as it alway did his job so perfectly, still it's close to a year old i think. maybe i should buy another charger, hard one, coz i don't need one...unless it's dead...

Never hurts to have back up.

 

[redeyedancer]

Its also been suggested arround here to run a nail file across the firing pin real quick to help clean off any oxidation and increase poor performance.

I totally agree this really helps if you have run the mod dirty for a long time

 

[Jeann]

Couple questions have you tried different attys and are you using the same juice as before.

Just an FYI I ussually change out my batts at between 3.7v and 3.8v and that is with a 1.5ohm atty. Its very rare I take them down to 3.55v.

I know you cleaned the conacts with vodka but a good hot water bath followed by an IPA cleaning of the contacts and re-noaloxing might help?

yeah, tryed quite some atty's...
ran out of the liquid so have been testing several liquids that's why i ended up using the old ego-set and not having problems there with the liquid using now.
can't buy IPA here, the ones they sell over here they poison to prevent it being used for drinking.
aah the grey stuff, forgot the name, noaloxing i did

Its also been suggested arround here to run a nail file across the firing pin real quick to help clean off any oxidation and increase poor performance.

Never hurts to have back up.

am seriously thinking about it indeed! it's the money thing...

I totally agree this really helps if you have run the mod dirty for a long time

going to try that! mine is the oldest of the bunch and never had a nail-file-treatment

 

[Jeann]

just went to check if the Pila was propperly plugged in at the back of the device itself, as i rememberd all of a sudden had problems with that ages ago. result it wasn't fully plugged in so did a recharge on the batts but none of them kept charging for more then a minute, so quess no luck that it's that simple.

it's past bed time over at this part of the world, thank you so much for the advice so far, going to work with these tomorrow

cya all later

 

[Rhapsodies Fire]

Hi Jeann!!! It's so good to hear from you again! I'm so glad you have been without cigs...and for nearly 6 months now!! Time sure does fly!

I agree a good cleaning is in order...and perhaps an emery board might do the trick. I also think that trying to charge them on a different charger might be a good idea to see if it is the charger. Which AW's are you using...the IMRs (red) or the IC's (black)? When my batteries come off the charger they are at 4.2ish.

*edit* sweet dreams, Jeann!

 

[RocketRod]

My thought is that they are not coming off the charger at 4.2v. I don't know if that indicates a weak charger or not. Now you might say that 1/2 to 1v isn't much, but I suspect it does. Are the batteries tight in the charger with the spacer? I'm also assuming you are using an AW IMR 14500, with a mAh rating of 600. My Pila charger is capable of an output of 4.2V @ 600mAh and charges my 14500's very fast. My 18650's not so fast. And when measuring it I get 4.18 without a battery in it (no load of course). Still charges mine to 4.2.

Hope you get it worked out Jeann!

 

[Sterno]

try an Xtar 2-bay charger good price and good to have a back up charger i can vouch for this charger it does a really good job for the money
Xtar MP2 II
and the 6-bay is good also
XTAR WP6 II

 

[Jeann]

Hi Jeann!!! It's so good to hear from you again! I'm so glad you have been without cigs...and for nearly 6 months now!! Time sure does fly!

I agree a good cleaning is in order...and perhaps an emery board might do the trick. I also think that trying to charge them on a different charger might be a good idea to see if it is the charger. Which AW's are you using...the IMRs (red) or the IC's (black)? When my batteries come off the charger they are at 4.2ish.

*edit* sweet dreams, Jeann!

Lisa! good to see you. yes time does fly, you helped me so good to finnally let those cigs go, by now it's rare that i have those gravings, only when am angry bout something
yes am going to start with a good cleaning, did that only once in the more than a year that am using this one, and a nail file treatment witch i didn't know about until now.

My thought is that they are not coming off the charger at 4.2v. I don't know if that indicates a weak charger or not. Now you might say that 1/2 to 1v isn't much, but I suspect it does. Are the batteries tight in the charger with the spacer? I'm also assuming you are using an AW IMR 14500, with a mAh rating of 600. My Pila charger is capable of an output of 4.2V @ 600mAh and charges my 14500's very fast. My 18650's not so fast. And when measuring it I get 4.18 without a battery in it (no load of course). Still charges mine to 4.2.

Hope you get it worked out Jeann!

thank you yes i do use the red AW IMR 14500 600mah.

gee, you made me think, when things were still good almost all batts game off the Pila with 4.15v exact, it was rare to see a 4.14v or 4.16v. now i see more variation sometimes even 4.08v or once even 4.17v...maybe this is an indicator that the Pila is dying? Any thoughts of it's lifesan, as it is about a year old, thought it might be able to work for a bit longer then that...or maybe not, it has been charching at least 5-6 batts a day, every day...yes it does charge them fast indeed, sometimes i even think too fast, but we do empty the batts not as much as we used to.

try an Xtar 2-bay charger good price and good to have a back up charger i can vouch for this charger it does a really good job for the money
Xtar MP2 II
and the 6-bay is good also
XTAR WP6 II

hey scott aww, too late, just placed my order oh well, maybe next time coz, if the culpit is the charger am planning to buy me a backup.

and now am very curious if the new one will charge them up till 4.20v coz am very sure this one never did.

am very exited coz the shop where i bought my batts also sell now the Pila too and on top of that they now also sell neolox too, so that went into my basket too, coz i was still using the dots in the plasic bags from rob oh and also some more spacer magnets, witch i use in the charger as well, as they get lost sometimes.

phew, am a bit more hopefull now, thank you all

 

[Big Hitter]

Well I don't use 14500 batts so I'm not much help there.

I do have a Pila (2 actually) and when i did use 14500 they always came off at 4.18v .... every single time. And this was confirmed with my cheap screw in meter as well.
So the range of 4.10 to 4.15 concerns me a tad .... I do have a good multi-meter though so cheaper ones may vary that much.

In my limited experience the 30 minutes to drop down to 3.9 is on par with my usage as well.
I vape pretty heavy and don't feel the "umph" when they get to 3.8ish.

But the fact that you went so long being happy with them and now the change is strange ???

I can tell you for me it only took a couple weeks to figure out that 14500 vaping was not for me.
Its a shame because I liked the form factor of the mini for slipping in my pocket while out running errands but I soon realized if I was going to be out for more than an hour I took along a Grand or woodvil for the car as well.

I finally decided after acquiring six full size REOs that I should just sell the mini stuff and be done with it.

I hope you get back to your vaping "happy place" soon. Good luck.

All the other advice was good and I agree to try and clean everything .... Mod, Firing Pin, battery charger contacts.
Those little alcohol whipes they use before a shot work great .... or even alcohol eyeglass cleaning pads.

Not sure if you said how many ml you vape per day but you might want to think about upgrading to a bigger battery REO.
The 18490 metal REO might be just the ticket when they come out. You can always sell a mini for 20-25 bucks less than you paid .... thats cheap rent for the mod while you had it.

 

[Jeann]

Hey Tim yes that was what started me thinking, the variation of the voltage of the batts when they come off the Pila, that wasn't there before. used to think, well, the voltage is high enoug so it's full, but maybe that might not be the case. yeah, think my multimeter is a cheap one but i have always used it so no difference here.

think i vape bout 2, 3 sometimes 4 ml a day, usually spread in several heady duty vaping sessions
yeah, been regulary thinking on upgrading to a grand or woodvill, would love to have one, maybe i will sooner or later. for now i would like to get these back on track, if i ever want to sell them they also need to be working propperly. so either way i need to know what's wrong and solve it.

update:
rofl, apperently my love hates it when he's not in vape heaven, allready orderd a new Pila and now he also orderd the XTar MP2 II, so charger wise we will be set soon

gave the mini's a nail file treatment and his another dot of neolox, so far so good *fingers crossed*. mine, as well as the backup, i gave them good wash under the warm water tap and are sitting to dry.

while waiting for my mini to dry did my atty on the ego batt and dripp from the 3ml bottle, lol. anyway, turned out the atty i was using is preforming bad when it's wet (not flooded) and preforms better when it was close to a dryburn......sigh, dunno what to think anymore, quess measuring their resistance isn't enough either. well, at least now i do have an atty witch is preforming very good and that one will go on my mini when it's dry

thank you all so much for the support, awesome

 

[Skeeter T]

Can someone chime in on what effect dropping the AW IMR's has. Can it speed up the discharge rate? I just discovered my #2 (in rotation) AW IMR 18650 - 1600 is discharging very fast on my Grand and it's the one I accidentally dropped 3 FT on a hard plastic rug protector at my computer desk about a month ago. Dropping things after a few Scotch rocks is not unusual.

 

[Jeann]

wow! allready had a reply from the shop, on a sathureday evening...awesome costumer service. she also think it might be the charger and gave me some good tips to try...me bussy and getting to the bottom of this

ooh and other good news, my love been vaping on one new battery for 5 hours! so the nail file thing may be working

 

[washvap]

Hey Jeann, it's great to see you!! Good to see that everything is working out for you and your husband.

 

[Jeann]

Hey washvap, great to see you too!! yes things are looking much better now, thanks to all the fantastic support

imagen this, late last night i recieved a message that the Pila alleady has been packeged and made ready to send it. i mean, i knew this was a good shop form reviews and been ordering there for over a year now and never had any problems. now that i needed help, they are there for me with exellent advice about the batteries and the charger, she even took the effort to read this thread so could follow the efforts taken on the mod-side, and all this with the speed of light.

it looks like it's a combination of things, lack of maintainence on the mini's and the Pila reaching the end of it's life. all this while we were also finding ourselfs another liquid, had a batch base liquids and flavourings witch were clogging up the atty's in no time, tried with it for a while but it all eventually ended in the bin. and on top of that also 2 atomizers ending their life...quess i just couldn't find head nor tails in all this..and i was stubbern, coz i didn't want to believe that the Pila is dying

 

[TennDave]

Yes, sometimes when you change things up quickly with different items- including the liquid and attys, it becomes difficult to know which one is the culprit in not having the "vaping bless" you are used to. I've been through it many times!! It helps to have a few Reo's so you can unscrew an atty from one that is working properly, and even port over the juice bottle (after blowing out the tubing) to see what might be up. I've also had a charger go bad on me (not a Pila) and it took about a week of different things before I really figured it out and ended up ordering a new one (Xtar!!). Now all is good again!