Smoktech R Tank Woes

[Plumes.91]

I'm using the Smoktech R tank right now and its giving me difficulties...
The wick is drying up after the 1st hit and the throat hit is leaving me wantingg...

Any ideas on how to make this work better?
When I bought it I wasn't aware of the set up inside and now I'm regretting it..
I have heard good things about it so I'm hoping it will turn out better than this.
I thought I was going to be able to do a single horizontal wick but maybe not.

Anyways if anyone has ideas on how to get it working well with the stock set-up I'm all eyes.

 

[Lavaca5]

I had the same problem with the silica wick / coil that came installed. Got rid of that and started using cotton yarn instead of silica. Now, it's my favorite RBA. No dry hits - ever - and incredible flavor. The downside is that I have to change the wick/coil every 2 or 3 tanks. The cotton yarn really hangs on to the gunk and you can't dry burn it to clean the coil. That said, yarn and wire is cheap and really easy to install on that device, so it's well worth it to me.

 

[Plumes.91]

ughh i really want to try to make this work right out of the box with the prebuilt wick.
I KNOW theres got to be vapers that post here that get it to work lol.
Otherwise they wouldn't sell it with the included wick and wire set up!! lol

I even popped it onto my variable wattage device and it burnt first hit?
No voltage seems perfect for this wick/wire.. It either burns or gives me no TH.
Anyone have an idea of what I can do?

 

[Plumes.91]

bump for help tonight?

 

[jamesfarrell]

I too fell pray to this utter piece of crap. I the garbage it goes. Nothing but burnt taste. Horrible device and will be leaving a negative review on the site. Don't they test these things out? $20 down the drain. Unreal.

 

[DevastationWagon]

Don't bin it just yet!

I saw a video where the same problems were described and the poster, with a few small modifications, turned it into a rock solid Genesis style atty.

In a nutshell, the center hole was soldered closed, an airhole was drilled in the top section next to the wick, and the wick hole was bored out. Or something like that...

 

[Thrasher]

i didnt like mine either, if i was still into this type of setup i think i would get a drunkard tank now. LOL chinese test there wicks? is this a trick question? lol i never got a chinese atty with a stock wick that worked well.

 

[jamesfarrell]

Thing seems like a nightmare to get it to work right. I think it's probably easier to get an AGA T+ working.

 

[Katdavar]

I have been useing the rtank for about two weeks now. The only issues I have had was a bad center post that lightcig warrented for me. Best advice I can give you is unwind the wick all the way to coil. I did this on my first tank and nwver had a dry hit out of it. I replaced a coil todat and didny unwind the fibers and was getting dry hits. After tank is empty I will unwind wick and let ya know.

 

[pdib]

for now, leave stock setup, leave tank full, and drip it. Tomorrow, ss mesh u-wick. 3 days from now, use what you bought to replace it.

 

[Almarma]

Hi!
Today I've shop this tank online and have to wait some days until it arrives, but I was looking for a replacement for my Vivi Novas and this tank looks promising. I'm reading some people complaining about dry hits and, as I've fighted before with the Vivis and with an AGA-T with silica wicks, I've done a lot of different setups, I refuse to believe that this device cannot work. In my experience, the wick is really really important, and not all are the same. I have 3 different types of silica wick and each one is different, so, if you are having problems, try a different wick type or, as Katdavar says, unroll the fibers of the wick. That helps in my experience too.

Also, using a double wick, has to help. You can see an example here (it's in German, but you can follow the process only watching, as I did):
R Tank von Smok wickeln - YouTube

I think of using even more wick inside the well, as if it were a dripping device, like an IGO-L, but with two wicks falling to a tank that will wet again the top wicks while you don't vape, like keeping the main liquid in the top floor, and a reservoir of liquid in the bottom tank.

I decided to try this item because, as happened with mi AGA, looks funny to play with it with different setups. I'll post info and photos of the results when I get mine

 

[Plumes.91]

Since posting this thread I did get my R tank working well almost every time I set it up, and it was my main header for a while there. I ended up using FRAYED silica wick, and the thing works fantastic. If you do get a dry hit with frayed silica, just tip your mod for a bit and the frayed silica fibers soak that juice right up. I am probably going to try a cotton wick soon because I have gotten into cotton with my A7s on my reo since posting this thread. I have been using vivi novas and RDAs & havent really been using RBA tanks, so I'm excited to try cotton in one. Should be cool. I'll try cotton wick/string and rolled cotton as well. All in all, the R tank is a nice vision vivi nova replacement. My advice is to pick them up if you can still find them for sale. Any reputable vendors that still have R tanks for sale, probably have them for cheap. But as the R tank becomes more obscure, & rare, beware of douche vendors charging a TON of money for them.

 

[MJMcMahon]

Plumes -

I got a wild hair and decided to take another swing at using my R-tank. Like you, I had similar issues with it out of the box: inconsistent hits. One flavorful, the next dry and nasty. I went thru and rebuilt a coil (not great work, I'll admit) and tried it again tonight and it started off the same way I remembered until I dry fired it and let the coil build up a little oxidization and then it seemed to let the juice flow a little better. I'm also going to do some more research on proper coil building as mine look like crap!

 

[Njt07]

If you want to make 3 easy mods to it, it works great.
1. Drill a small hole in the groove of the cap. The easiest way to do this is screw the cap on, eyeball the location of the coil and touch that spot on the outside with a magic marker, in the groove. I usually put my hole to the left of one of the posts.

2. Plug the center air hole with a toothpick or what have you, epoxy works well too, just make sure its food safe.

3. Drill out, or ream out the wick holes with a 3/32 drill bit, the platform is plastic so its really easy.

Set up your coil thread cotton wick and vape, it works great. BTW the stock coil and wick are horrible.

One last tip, there is an inner ring on the top cap that can unscrew after a while. If you find that you cant screw the top cap all the way down, take it off, and use your finger on the inside to tighten that ring, dunno why its there, irritated the crap out of me until I figured it out.

 

[Njt07]

Plumes -

I got a wild hair and decided to take another swing at using my R-tank. Like you, I had similar issues with it out of the box: inconsistent hits. One flavorful, the next dry and nasty. I went thru and rebuilt a coil (not great work, I'll admit) and tried it again tonight and it started off the same way I remembered until I dry fired it and let the coil build up a little oxidization and then it seemed to let the juice flow a little better. I'm also going to do some more research on proper coil building as mine look like crap!

Heres what I do, I'm sure others have done this first but I read about it somewhere on here...

1. Take a 3/32 drill bit, wrap your wire around it, keeping it tight for as many wraps as you want.
2. keep the bit inside the coil and attach to the posts, remove the bit.
3. Dry fire until the coils are red, the coil will deform a bit, this is ok.
4. Gently reinsert the drill bit and straighten out the coil, remove bit.
5. Dry fire again till coils are red, they should not deform.
(optional) 6. get some tweezers ready, dry fire again till red. Immediately after you let go of the power button, gently squeeze the coils together to get a nice tight coil with minimal spaces between the coils.

it sounds like a lot, I just broke the steps down, it gets a lot easier as you rebuild. BTW this coil size is perfect for using peaches and cream 100% cotton yarn from walmart. Just clip a length off, I moisten, twist and thread it through the coil. A needle threader is very useful here if you have a hard time threading it through.

 

[MJMcMahon]

Many thanks NJT! Your trick of using the drillbit to wrap the coil on and leaving it in place to attach the coil worked extremely well! Unfortunately, I'm still getting a burn taste and after looking at the air hole I believe I know why: the plastic looks like it's melted. I guess this is why most RBAs have metal decks, huh?

I will probably not keep the R-tank, but the drillbit approach will be invaluable for building other coils! Thank you!