After a couple of weeks with the eGo-T, I really like it for anytime I'm not sitting at home and dripping. Yes, the flavors are a bit muted and the vapor is cooler. This isn't surprising to me, the vapor has to go past the needle plate, up the cone, through a couple of little skinny channels ("vapeways"?) on the side of the tank, then through a couple of little tiny holes in the mouthpiece.
Compare this to my home-made drip tip on a standard 510 debridged/dewicked atty. I have a hole approximately .266" (17/64") in the drip tip, actually, just a hair bigger, as I polished it carefully after drilling. I literally have a hole bigger than 1/4" in diameter directly from my mouth to the coil. The distance from coil to mouth is shorter, and there's less "stuff" for the vapor to come in contact with, thereby less "stuff" cooling it and being condensed on. I get consistently warm, flavorful vapes off this set-up.
As long as I keep the coil wet enough, and not too wet, that is. That's another good point for the tank, it keeps the atty nicely wet, but not flooded. I've only had a few "dry" vapes off the tank, and that was shortly after putting a fresh tank on a freshly cleaned atty. My fault, in other words. I didn't allow it time to prime, or didn't do some priming puffs to get things flowing.
Now, the reason for my post. Since the vapor has to go farther, and through smaller holes, it gets cooled off more, and has more contact with surfaces, which gives it a chance to condense there. I'm sure most of you tank users have noticed condensed juice in the mouthpiece, particularly inside those vapeways. It just seems reasonable to me that if we can open up the vapeways in the tank a bit, it should give a warmer, more flavorful vape.
So I put one of my 5 precious tanks under the knife. An as-yet unused one.
Using a 0.0625" or (1/16") drill bit, I opened up the holes in the 2 inserts in the mouthpiece, and drilled two new holes, one on each side of the original one in the center. This gave me more than 3x the open area that I had before, .1875", or (3/16"). Any of you who know your fluid dynamics, yes, I know it's not the same, but we're just talking in general terms. I did this to both inserts, inner and outer.
I considered taking out the inner insert entirely, but I figure it really isn't hurting anything, as the open area is the same as the outer, and it might save me from getting juice in the mouth quite as easily if something drastic happens. I may also open up the holes some more, basically by removing the material between the holes, so it will have a long slit instead of 3 separate holes.
Then I did some more radical surgery. I cut off the thin piece of plastic that extends from the "outer" part of the tank, (the part you see when it's inserted into the atty cone), that covers the "vapeway" on either side of the tank, so that I had as big an opening as possible from the atty to the mouthpiece. I left about a millimeter untouched, so that I can get a good seal against the rim of the cone.
And a (blurry) view from each end, showing the enlarged opening to the vapeway:
After I did the first side, I blew through the mouthpiece end. The larger amount of air coming out the modified side vs. the unmodified was quite obvious.
The results? Well, this is, of course, subjective. YMMV, at your own risk, I've only tested one juice so far, yadda yadda.
I think it's better. The draw is about the same, as the bottleneck for air flow is the two slits at the battery end of the atty cone. I used the same atty with two tanks. I used the same juice in the tanks, one modified as above, and the other stock. The juice used was Backwoods Brew Cola, 12mg, 70pg/30vg.
- When dripping, it has a nice "bite" on the tongue during the draw, warm, thick vapor feel, moderate TH, and good cola flavor on the exhale.
- In the unmodded tank, it is completely missing the "bite" on draw, and the flavor seems muted. Of course, the vapor is cool, and seems to be "thinner". As the tank gets lower, a little bite begins to appear on the draw, and flavor increases a bit.
- In the modded tank, the bite is there, but not quite as sharp as dripped. The flavor, while still lacking something, seems to me a good bit stronger than the unmodded tank. The vapor feel seems to be a bit warmer and thicker. And the lower the tank got, the better it got, too.
I think I'm going to stop filling my tanks quite as full. 3/4 seems a reasonable amount. That should still last quite a while, unless I'm realling hitting it hard. Even then, refilling is easy, you don't have to guess, "Is this the drop that's going to fill it?" You can
see how much is in the blamed thing. You also don't run the risk of flooding the atty, which I seem to have a tendency to do while dripping.
Altogether, I think this is a worthwhile mod. I intend to do the rest of my tanks.
I hope someone else will put a tank under the knife, to confirm or deny my subjective results. Let me know via PM, please, if you are thinking about doing this.
Leakage: I have only had one incident, with an unmodded tank, and that was when there was only about 3-5 drops left in the tank, and I had the PV at about a 45 degree or less angle in a holder. I think this is the point where the needle/wick is no longer totally submerged. Since the surface tension of the liquid keeps it from running out the hole when the tanks are not inserted in the atty, the ability for air to move freely into the tank allows the liquid to run freely out.
So, keeping the tank at a level between 1/4 and 3/4 full should address most leakage issues, and give me the best, most flavorful vape.
Burned taste: I had one atty that started giving me a burned taste. I blew it out, ran it under the tap using HOT water, blowing the water through several times from both ends, popped it into a jar of PGA, agitated it thoroughly, blew it out and did a brief dry burn, rinsed in water, back in PGA, and blew it out thoroughly. No more nastiness.
