Stage one of my wick troubleshooting is complete. Sorry Im unable to do videos but youll get the idea
and you can do it yourself with little trouble. And I believe I unintentionally confirmed brs suspicions about the gunk-in-the-slits.
First I took an unused R4, cleaned & dry-burned. Cut off the tube & put it into an empty, completely dry syringe-mod (un-topped). Maintaining vertical, I carefully placed a large drop of water (I know, I know
but this is experimentation and water is a good, constant control liquid) at the base, deliberately avoiding the wicks. Fired the coil and tilted & rolled the unit to bring the water to a wick tail, maintaining as much vertical as possible. Immediately upon wick/water contact, the water raced no
it FLEW up the wick into the cup, dousing the orange glow across the entire length of the coil. Startlingly fast. Holy shyte fast! Repeat, repeat, repeat.
I repeated the process with a stock R4 out of the box (cleaned & dry-burned). Identical results. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Then, I repeated the entire process in the syringe with a very well used & lesser performing R4 with the classic gunked-at-the-slits wick. It wicked all of the water but at a significantly slower speed
and never did completely douse the dry-burn glow from the coil. Plenty of stinky vapor on the water side but the coil did not get entirely cooled. Repeat, repeat, repeat
It appears that the gunk, which has previously been observed to separate & brittle-ize the wick strands (to look & act like charring or burning) is actually clogging the wick right before the liquid gets to the real heat.
Add to this the cooler actual operating temperature & our juice viscosity issues and well, you get the idea