Protank Help

[jaynole]

I've tried the search function, not giving me what I want and I know I've read it before, recently. So here goes.

I love my Protanks, really, really do. I love them for exactly a day, then the inevitable happens. They loose their punch, flavor and vapor drop, I mean significantly, to the point my Evods on a ego 650 produce more vapor and flavor.

I'm running them on a Zmax v3, power set around 7 watts up or down dependant upon the head. Some have 2.6's in them, some 2.3's. I get clouds of vapor and all the flavor goodness in the world for the first 6 - 8 hours then everything degrades. My juice isn't uber think, it is on the darker side of juices though. I don't get dry or burnt hits, just poor flavor performance and vapor production.

Do I just need to rinse and dry burn that often?
Is it a product of chain vaping?
Am I using too much power?

Any help, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


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[retired1]

You might want to try pulling one of the flavor wicks.

 

[jaynole]

I tried that after watching that same video a couple days ago, worked great for a couple hours, then flooded and leaked out of the post. Totally unvapable and I only removed one flavor wick. Thanks for the quick reply though.

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[Glen Snyder]

I don't have any juices that I vape below 9 watts. Most of the 50/50's at 10 - 12 in the PT. 8 watts or below are very muted in any of my bottom coils (PT, Evod, T3 and T3S). I clean and dry burn about every other day and replace the flavor wicks with 2 pieces of 1 mm silica.

 

[xtwosm0kesx]

Have you tried replacing all (2) of your silica flavor wicks (keeping main silica wick for dryburning) with a single cotton flavor wick using the cottonball method. Only downside is you'll be replacing them often but it takes just a minute and 1 ball will make TONS of them.

Ive had great luck with it and it definitely improved the flavor a bit.

 

[jaynole]

Have you tried replacing all (2) of your silica flavor wicks (keeping main silica wick for dryburning) with a single cotton flavor wick using the cottonball method. Only downside is you'll be replacing them often but it takes just a minute and 1 ball will make TONS of them.

Ive had great luck with it and it definitely improved the flavor a bit.

I have not, do you just twist a bit off a cotton ball and trim it in to fill the gap, I looked on YouTube, couldn't find a video for that.

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[Jazzi Mike]

You are supposed to top off the tank after it gets less than 1/4-1/3 full. That is true of all Kanger products. It interrupts the vacuum that keeps juice flowing. Personally, I have never removed a flavor wick. Judging from responses on here, it only is a success around 50% of the time and I don't like those odds. Another thing that Ive been doing lately is after a few top offs, I empty the remaining 1/3 and fill back up with fresh juice. I do this when the juice in the Protank is darker than the juice in the bottle. Helps to stop gunk from forming in your tank.

 

[jaynole]

To be honest, I usually top off around the half glass area, no particular reason, just like to keep it full, and it's so easy. So the vacuum in tank shouldn't be my problem.

Tonight I did a thorough alcohol bath and hot water rinse, clean and dried everything, carefully dried the flavor wicks, dry burned the coil a bit, and put it all back together. Seems to be vaping better. The flavor wicks had small burn marks on them, would've replaced them with cotton and tried that if I would have seen that post before hand. I will give that a try on my next cleaning.

I'm also going to order some wire and wicks. I want to give recoiling and rewicking a try.

Watched several videos, one video used a 2mm wick for the coil and two 1mm wicks for flavor, similar to stock.

Another video used a single 2.5mm wick, I would think that would eventually flood.

The last video I watched used a single 2mm for the coil, put everything back together, folded the same wick back over the coil, replaced the post and trimmed each side. It seemed kinda slick. I like the idea of just using the same wick.

I figure if I can pull this off, I might dabble a bit into RBA's. That Kayfun Lite would look slick on top of my flat top Zmax.

Thanks for everyone's input so far, still trying to get it right.

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[xtwosm0kesx]

I have not, do you just twist a bit off a cotton ball and trim it in to fill the gap, I looked on YouTube, couldn't find a video for that.

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I pull a piece off the cotton ball while trying to follow the 'grain' (how the strands of cotton are spun up to make the ball), roll the puff in my fingers (not twisting) while gently stretch/pulling on it till you draw it out into kind of a fluffy string, it helps to wet your fingers just a tiny bit while doing it. Then once youve got a nice piece continue to roll it in your fingers till the wick is of the desired thickness, if its too thick you can always split it and make two smaller ones. Stick it in the head, trim it, prime it, reassemble, vape!

 

[popman]

I pull a piece off the cotton ball while trying to follow the 'grain' (how the strands of cotton are spun up to make the ball), roll the puff in my fingers (not twisting) while gently stretch/pulling on it till you draw it out into kind of a fluffy string, it helps to wet your fingers just a tiny bit while doing it. Then once youve got a nice piece continue to roll it in your fingers till the wick is of the desired thickness, if its too thick you can always split it and make two smaller ones. Stick it in the head, trim it, prime it, reassemble, vape!

How about making a video with your techniques?

Your talking about the flavor wicks and not the heating coil. I hope I'm right! I don't see how just plain cotton would work next to a heating coil. Sounds like a potential fire hazard. But what do i know?

JL

 

[crxess]

Maybe your batteries are just dropping off and the mos isn't holding power stable.

I vape some pretty dark e-liquids at times and can usually run through 3 tanks before I Rinse wicks to avoid issues.

Also, if your Vapor drops off
a) flooding
b) Coil/wick loaded up
Increase power .5w for a few draws and see if it clears up.

 

[xtwosm0kesx]

How about making a video with your techniques?

Your talking about the flavor wicks and not the heating coil. I hope I'm right! I don't see how just plain cotton would work next to a heating coil. Sounds like a potential fire hazard. But what do i know?

JL

You most certainly CAN use cotton (and that technique) to make coil wicks (after all, the flavor wick literally sits RIGHT on the coil). You just cant dry burn them at all, can't even fire the coil when its dry otherwise they're ruined. So you must always prime them first, but a cotton main and cotton flavor wick work quite well in the EVOD/Protank heads ive rebuilt that way.

Right now im enjoying using silica main so im able to dry burn my continually gunky coils, then use cotton flavor wicks that i change every tank/flavor or so.

 

[jaynole]

I actually took all the wicks out of a cleaned head tonight. Unwound a cotton ball, rolled up a bit and threaded the freshly dry burned coils like a needle. Rolled up a thicker strand and laid it across for flavor, applied the post, trimmed and she vapes pretty damn good. It really wasn't too hard at all.

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[BlueMoods]

I use cotton for all of my protank wicks, as xt said, it's fine as long as you NEVER fire the coils with dry cotton even near them. It will burn and be ruined for good - make sure it's wet before firing and it's the most flavorful wick I've found. I use cheesecloth or flour sack towels mostly just because I always have those around for other uses.

 

[Vwls]

You are supposed to top off the tank after it gets less than 1/4-1/3 full. That is true of all Kanger products. It interrupts the vacuum that keeps juice flowing. Personally, I have never removed a flavor wick. Judging from responses on here, it only is a success around 50% of the time and I don't like those odds. Another thing that Ive been doing lately is after a few top offs, I empty the remaining 1/3 and fill back up with fresh juice. I do this when the juice in the Protank is darker than the juice in the bottle. Helps to stop gunk from forming in your tank.

OMG THANK YOU!!! This explains why I had so many problems today. Tank was too low!

 

[Vwls]

As long as we are on the topic pf Protank idiosyncrasies, can anyone explain this? Got a brand new Protank, used it for like two weeks - everything was great. Then today got gurgles and dry hits and leakage. So I pulled out the head, replaced it, filled up the tank and screwed it back on my Provari. Now mind you, I have been using it on this same Provari the entire time prior to this head replacement. (Probably didn't even need to replace the head - I think from reading Jazzi's comment that my tank was just too low,)

But anyways, suddenly, I can't draw through the thing. No air flow! Now the only way I can get airflow is to loosen it on the Provari till there's a pretty large visible gab between the tank and the mod. What happened?

 

[jaynole]

I had an issue today with not being able to draw air, none, sealed as can be. I was switching heads and had 2 different Protanks on the table, I switched the bases by mistake, switched them back and I got my air again. I honestly think my second Protank is a knock off, lol. The based sure don't mix. Not sure if that's your problem, but putting it out there anyway.

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[M_DuBb716]

OP, I feel your pain. When I got my protank, I was having the same exact problems no matter what I did. The tank would taste great and give me great thick vapor clouds, but literally after using it for 6 or so hours, the coil would go to crap like you said, and I'd have to replace it.. I never vaped high (around 6.6watts), but even if I lowered down to like 5.5w - the coils still wouldn't last

But I found a solution, for me at least.. I started building my own coils for the protanks the other day using Kanthal wire and Silica wick, mainly hoping for better performance (vapor thicknes/flavor/coil-lif/TH), but also to save money..
..... But than I found out about the microcoil - instead of 4 to 6 separated wraps of coil around the wick, like a normal coil; you wrap 8-12 times (I've heard of people wrapping more, but hard too fit more than 12 in the PT) of coil, and you want the wires to be TOUCHING closely, instead of separated.. and started using cotton (from q-tips) for my wicking material, it works much better!!


The MICROCOIL is amazing!! It usually ends up being in the range of 1.8-2.5ohm depending on how many times you wrap the coil and what gauge Kanthal you use. The way it works is, since there's sop much coil but it's all touching, it all heats up completely evenly and superrr fast - and vapes better than, but very similar too a sub-ohm RBA setup!! I use 30gauge for now and it works soo much better than stock protank coils.. And the microcoil itself will last a longg time, when the cotton goes bad I just pull it out, rinse the coil, dry burn it, and slide a new little piece of cotton in!! Easyy

It vapes like a freight time, all day, every vape, throughout the entire tank - like a champ!! And for some reason I can now turn my eVic all the way up (11watts) without a burnt taste, I usually vape around 7.5w now with my new MC..It's so cool if you dry-burn the coil, you really see how fast & evenly it all lights up, like one unit, since all the coil is touching. i love it, check out my thread in this sub-forum > > "Just Built my 1st Microcoil!"

I've tried the search function, not giving me what I want and I know I've read it before, recently. So here goes.

I love my Protanks, really, really do. I love them for exactly a day, then the inevitable happens. They loose their punch, flavor and vapor drop, I mean significantly, to the point my Evods on a ego 650 produce more vapor and flavor.

I'm running them on a Zmax v3, power set around 7 watts up or down dependant upon the head. Some have 2.6's in them, some 2.3's. I get clouds of vapor and all the flavor goodness in the world for the first 6 - 8 hours then everything degrades. My juice isn't uber think, it is on the darker side of juices though. I don't get dry or burnt hits, just poor flavor performance and vapor production.

Do I just need to rinse and dry burn that often?
Is it a product of chain vaping?
Am I using too much power?

Any help, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


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[M_DuBb716]

Yeah rebuilding is definitely worth it bro, and you would loveee the micrcoil on the protank trust me. I forgot to say, when building the MC, I wrap the wire around a 1/16th in. drill bit.. I guess that puts it at the perfect diameter for the protank.
.. but yeah I wrap about 10 wraps of 30 gauge Kanthal around the drill bit, install the coil into my Protank with the drill bit still in it (watch a youtube video for this), take the drill bit out, dry burn the coil and test resistance, than slide a little piece of cotton through it, a little piece of cotton on top for flavor-wick, let it prime with juice for 15minutes, and it vapes like a fog machine alll day!!

Never a dry-hit, always amazing flavor and throat hit (better flavor than silica IMO), hugeee thick vapor cloud everytime, and it's easy to build and maintain!! Google search for my thread here "1st Microcoil", it's a 12 page thread of my entire learning process

 

[Susan W.]

I tried to love the Protank, I really did, but I was getting really frustrated with the same issue you have with it. I was using it on my Provari. I don't want to rebuild anything but then again, I don't want to be changing heads everyday. I finally gave up on them for now. I'm hoping the heads get modified.

I've tried the search function, not giving me what I want and I know I've read it before, recently. So here goes.

I love my Protanks, really, really do. I love them for exactly a day, then the inevitable happens. They loose their punch, flavor and vapor drop, I mean significantly, to the point my Evods on a ego 650 produce more vapor and flavor.

I'm running them on a Zmax v3, power set around 7 watts up or down dependant upon the head. Some have 2.6's in them, some 2.3's. I get clouds of vapor and all the flavor goodness in the world for the first 6 - 8 hours then everything degrades. My juice isn't uber think, it is on the darker side of juices though. I don't get dry or burnt hits, just poor flavor performance and vapor production.

Do I just need to rinse and dry burn that often?
Is it a product of chain vaping?
Am I using too much power?

Any help, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


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