Thanks WallyO...even if I did find my soft drip tip, my wicks are not lined up with the airholes...and I can't get them to budge...may attempt later a work around.
PHOENX Raven Modding
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This will require taking this thing apart.
I decided to try just taking tht stupid metal collar out of the equation.
I reassembled the raven, much easier without that collar, but before i stuck the bottom piece back in, i threaded a wick into the slots and held the wick so it was tight across the top of the slots, then put the atty in.
After reassembling, i stuck a carto rubber end cap upside down snug on the extra wick and on the atty. i stuk another carto end piece on top of he other one for insurance, put it ino a tank, and filled the tank.
Took a couple of unpowered drags to feed it then started vaping. Not bad so far ill see how it goes when the wicks expand.
Nice thing about this is, if it isnt feeding well i can adjust the rubber caps up or down to adjust the juice feed.
BTW the reason this is such a pain to take apart is because of that metal collar. If ou are carefull you can use two pair of pliers, one pair with the jaws hooked on the slots to twist it apart. The metal collar probably wont come out this way, you will have to use something, i used a large phillips head you could also use a 306 carto, to pop it out.
I decided to try just taking tht stupid metal collar out of the equation.
I reassembled the raven, much easier without that collar, but before i stuck the bottom piece back in, i threaded a wick into the slots and held the wick so it was tight across the top of the slots, then put the atty in.
After reassembling, i stuck a carto rubber end cap upside down snug on the extra wick and on the atty. i stuk another carto end piece on top of he other one for insurance, put it ino a tank, and filled the tank.
Took a couple of unpowered drags to feed it then started vaping. Not bad so far ill see how it goes when the wicks expand.
Nice thing about this is, if it isnt feeding well i can adjust the rubber caps up or down to adjust the juice feed.
BTW the reason this is such a pain to take apart is because of that metal collar. If ou are carefull you can use two pair of pliers, one pair with the jaws hooked on the slots to twist it apart. The metal collar probably wont come out this way, you will have to use something, i used a large phillips head you could also use a 306 carto, to pop it out.
This is funny, i have inadvertantly made an adjustable feed atty tank... Without that metal collar the tube spins. So now if its feeding too much or too little i just need to spin the tube to open or close the wick slots!
I've had great luck just boiling any new or dirty coil in the microwave for three or four minutes in a cup with about an inch of water over the highest part of the coil assembly. I also have an ultrasonic cleaner and it doesn't seem to do a better job than a good brick boil. My coils are seldom coked so there isn't all that much to clean off but it gets rid of the factory gunk. I also do a minimal dry burn on new coils at 3v until there is no longer any smoke or odor.
Errol
Njt07 I don't understand. How can that tube spin independently of the coil head when that head is a press fit in the tube itself.
My post you quoted was simply directed at getting the initial primer out... as I stated. It wasn't meant for general cleaning even though I know many say they use an ultrasonic cleaner for that... Myself, for general cleaning after using a carto for a while, I soak in PGA, let it dry and then dry burn.
Mainly because the metal collar is now gone and because i have taken it on and off a few times. Btw its working pretty darn good right now...
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I finally cleaned up the first carto that I had simply raised the coil and tested with... I've now also removed a little bit of wick as BonnyC has described and put it in my bigger tank.
This one is working great... Taste and vapor is almost the same as what I get with my Hyper SRT, in fact, I'm having a hard time telling them apart.
This one is working great... Taste and vapor is almost the same as what I get with my Hyper SRT, in fact, I'm having a hard time telling them apart.
This will pretty much be my last post on my Raven revival attempts.
My first four tanks that I raised the restrictor collar are still working good. I have been vaping them pretty much exclusively since yesterday. But they still were not awesome. I was determined to give one more shot.
Today I removed the restricter collar in another Raven carto and took a center post out of a 808 XLBC (because the 808 post is shorter). The cup is .005 smaller than the post base so I took the post to a wire wheel on a bench grinder and took all the plating off and then some till I got it to where I could get the post in. The post goes in around .025" deep giving me pretty close to the same wick opening as my other attempts. And now the carto itself fills with juice above the wicks just like an XL.
Here's a couple preasembly pics.
Assembled and filled with hush and it all leaked out in a few minutes. My bad. Used an old post plug that would not seal. You would think I would throw them out when they leak the first time but they always end up in the pile. Anyway put in a new top post plug and it's good to go. Performance may be better than my original attempt but it's really too close to call. I now have 5 usable Raven's to keep me from going crazy with anticipation waiting for another release. Both styles are working well, actually better than well, but still not the barn burner I expected the Ravens to be.
One major point I have learned is to have a good quantity juice of a flavor I like in a low or zero nic level for testing purposes. It's very hard to give a true performance and flavor comparison when I put a different flavor in each unit. It's also very hard to keep testing when your bodies nicotene level is going through the roof. Lesson learned. I'll be ordering a bottle of low nic Pyramid Fusion just to have on hand for future testing.
I am done playing with these now and I will be impatiently waiting for some new attempts from Betterlife Tech.
Thanks Danno and Chris for allowing us to play with these at no cost. It was fun and a learning experience for me.
My first four tanks that I raised the restrictor collar are still working good. I have been vaping them pretty much exclusively since yesterday. But they still were not awesome. I was determined to give one more shot.
Today I removed the restricter collar in another Raven carto and took a center post out of a 808 XLBC (because the 808 post is shorter). The cup is .005 smaller than the post base so I took the post to a wire wheel on a bench grinder and took all the plating off and then some till I got it to where I could get the post in. The post goes in around .025" deep giving me pretty close to the same wick opening as my other attempts. And now the carto itself fills with juice above the wicks just like an XL.
Here's a couple preasembly pics.
Assembled and filled with hush and it all leaked out in a few minutes. My bad. Used an old post plug that would not seal. You would think I would throw them out when they leak the first time but they always end up in the pile. Anyway put in a new top post plug and it's good to go. Performance may be better than my original attempt but it's really too close to call. I now have 5 usable Raven's to keep me from going crazy with anticipation waiting for another release. Both styles are working well, actually better than well, but still not the barn burner I expected the Ravens to be.
One major point I have learned is to have a good quantity juice of a flavor I like in a low or zero nic level for testing purposes. It's very hard to give a true performance and flavor comparison when I put a different flavor in each unit. It's also very hard to keep testing when your bodies nicotene level is going through the roof. Lesson learned. I'll be ordering a bottle of low nic Pyramid Fusion just to have on hand for future testing.
I am done playing with these now and I will be impatiently waiting for some new attempts from Betterlife Tech.
Thanks Danno and Chris for allowing us to play with these at no cost. It was fun and a learning experience for me.
This will pretty much be my last post on my Raven revival attempts.
My first four tanks that I raised the restrictor collar are still working good. I have been vaping them pretty much exclusively since yesterday. But they still were not awesome. I was determined to give one more shot.
Today I removed the restricter collar in another Raven carto and took a center post out of a 808 XLBC (because the 808 post is shorter). The cup is .005 smaller than the post base so I took the post to a wire wheel on a bench grinder and took all the plating off and then some till I got it to where I could get the post in. The post goes in around .025" deep giving me pretty close to the same wick opening as my other attempts. And now the carto itself fills with juice above the wicks just like an XL.
Here's a couple preasembly pics.
View attachment 129339 View attachment 129340
View attachment 129341 View attachment 129342
Assembled and filled with hush and it all leaked out in a few minutes. My bad. Used an old post plug that would not seal. You would think I would throw them out when they leak the first time but they always end up in the pile. Anyway put in a new top post plug and it's good to go. Performance may be better than my original attempt but it's really too close to call. I now have 5 usable Raven's to keep me from going crazy with anticipation waiting for another release. Both styles are working well, actually better than well, but still not the barn burner I expected the Ravens to be.
One major point I have learned is to have a good quantity juice of a flavor I like in a low or zero nic level for testing purposes. It's very hard to give a true performance and flavor comparison when I put a different flavor in each unit. It's also very hard to keep testing when your bodies nicotene level is going through the roof. Lesson learned. I'll be ordering a bottle of low nic Pyramid Fusion just to have on hand for future testing.
I am done playing with these now and I will be impatiently waiting for some new attempts from Betterlife Tech.
Thanks Danno and Chris for allowing us to play with these at no cost. It was fun and a learning experience for me.
Good work Wally.
Errol
With what I'm seeing on the two that I've worked on by just raising the coil from underneath and thinning the wicks slightly... I'm no longer faulting the engineering done on these... I'm faulting the assembly and lack of QC which came later.
Well I did Bonnie's fix and it was good for a little bit...then dry hits and burning. So this is a no go for me. Coupled with breaking my titan, not a good vaping day.
I respectfully disagree. Although they are both at fault. I say design fault has the edge over poor QC.
I totally agree, the design is still basically CE3 but they messed up bad on assembly
Did you also try gently pushing up on the coil from underneath through the 510 connector using a small wire so you are raising the coil up out of the bottom of the ceramic cup?
I only ask because on the Phoenix XL's that I was having issues with, thinning the wicks only didn't help but raising the coil and thinning them did. Of course on the XL's I had the advantage that I could disassemble and see what I was doing... with the Raven carto's I had to prod around with the wire in order to find out the orientation of the coil first so I knew were I needed to push up at.
LOL... Ok, you are allowed to substitute your own reality ( Mythbuster's saying reference ).... Of course that still can't dispute the successful results that BonnyC and I have had in our limited tests ( I think BonnyC "fixed" 2 and I know I "fixed" 2 ).
My limited testing gave the following results...
1st carto - Just raised coil - result that the dry hits happened less but was still frequent.
Next BonnyC mentioned thinning wicks...
2nd carto - Raised coil and thinned wick... Result was much better performance but at first would start ( but not reach ) a dry hit taste... This later change without additional alteration and worked without any dry hit flavor starting to show. Finished a full tank without further dry hits or dry hit flavor that typically showed up before it became a dry hit.
Going back to my first carto after cleaning... I now thinned the wick ( on the one I only raised at first ) and this unit works flawlessly.
I do need to go back to the second carto with a clean and dry burn before testing it further... The juice I'm testing with will gunk a coil within a tank full or two... so I normally clean after each tank. I'll continue to test on these two carto's through the week to see how they continue to perform ( or not as it may end up being )
Just to repeat that on my testing... I'm using a 80/20 PG/VG mix. On each of the carto's, once they started working, I initially got a very slight gurgle but never developed any leak on the bottom connector. This "slight" gurgle did go away over time. So the question would be, using a thinner juice would thinning the wick end up causing leaking... this probably needs testing but I probably won't buy an all PG juice myself just for this test.
RD, I did try that...of course since I am just learning about wicks and coils and things, I am not sure how successful I was at raising it since I can't see it. I also have a feeling it may be my vg. I may try thinning some later and try again. It is just I tried thinning some in my vivi yesterday, and it weakend the taste considerably.
Duh... I forgot about you using just VG.
As for trying to raise the coil by feel... I would expect varying results from anyone on that one even when I do it, I don't know what to expect. Not to mention that probably not all of these units will even need it raised... I just hate poor QC...
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