Question about "testing" older, recently cleaned, cartos

[ddirtyvapes]

This is not necessarily a strange question, but might be a little hard to explain so I'll do my best. I pretty much either drip or use cartos; I've always been curious about bottomfeeders/other juice feeders but now is not really the time or the monetary situation to go looking into that. I do love a good carto, and find myself using them very frequently when I don't want the hassle of dripping. I try to clean and reuse my cartos as much as possible and some clean out/work better on refills than others. (For example, I've found the IKV cartos, if cleaned properly, work really well on the 2nd fill even with a new juice and only start to peter out after the 3rd fill or so.) I am well aware the best way to clean a carto is to throw it out and start a new one...but for those of us that can't continuously buy new cartos, is there a way to test the ones that have recently been cleaned?

For example, I cleaned an IKV carto and I think after sitting around with juice in it and not in use for 2 weeks while I was on vacation and then soaking for a while in vodka, the polyfill expanded over the hole and I was clearly never going to get anymore airflow from it, so I tossed it. Some of my recently cleaned cartos, however, look like new. If I put around 5-7 drops in it, will I get a good idea of whether or not it will work okay, or is it just going to taste like burning polyfill if it's not filled to the brim? In case you can't guess, this whole question is meant to see if there are ways to avoid wasting 25+ drops of juice on an older carto in case I go to use it and it's crapped out.

Hope I made myself clear... any help would be appreciated!

 

[Levitas]

If I'm getting this right, I think what you could try is using some straight pg or vg (vg can be bought from walmart for pretty cheap), instead of your expensive juices.

But, I don't know if this would help or not?

 

[ddirtyvapes]

That's definitely not a bad idea! I did indeed mean that I like to try and see if the flavor still comes through okay, but I can trade a slightly muted flavor, if it's not a new carto, for vapor production. If there's one thing I can't stand anymore it's wispy little breaths of vapor (to each his own). Of course, in a perfect world you could truly reuse cartos with the same great flavor and vapor production like new for 4 or 5 times like some companies claim... but I can certainly give up a little flavor in order to continue using them. Good suggestion and I'll check it out, thanks. All other thoughts are welcome!

 

[Iffy]

... soaking for a while in vodka, the polyfill expanded over the hole and I was clearly never going to get anymore airflow from it, so I tossed it.

Was the hole covered when dried? I found that the filler will contract as it dries. I use eMDCCs and they're good to go after one cleaning.

 

[ddirtyvapes]

Iffy, the hole was covered before drying. Expanded wasn't the best term necessarily, because yes, generally absorbent things expand while drying. It was soaking wet from unknown (foul-tasting) juice, I soaked it in vodka and then usually what I do is, out of the vodka, run it under some nice hot water and gently blow it out (I do the water rise/blow-out 3-4x). It was closed as I was trying to do that; when I first ran water through it it would hardly let me blow any excess liquid out.

 

[Iffy]

Gotcha. I had the same issue on the second cleaning. Next time, I think I'll try to carefully work a skinny straw down next to the coils to prevent filler collapse. Won't hurt to try...

 

[ddirtyvapes]

Hear hear, that's not a bad idea. I wasn't 100% sure if that one was first, second, or even third cleaning so... I cut my losses on that one carto

 

[Iffy]

BTW, HERE's my go at eMDCC cleaning. Really great carto!