Being still pretty new to vaping in general, I doubt I'd have been brave enough to try ordering any of these clones if it weren't for the information folks have posted on this thread. Thank you all for taking the time to post here where I got to read about it! In the spirit of paying it forward, here's what info I can contribute.
My EHPro and KingTu versions arrived Monday, Nov. 10, from midsouthtrading. AFAIK, they're both the versions that shipped from China in late October, 2014.
(I asked him to wait to ship mine until he had both in stock.) Their first night here involved a good wash, air dry, and inverted tank leak tests. Both of them had some gunky/oily areas and some random debris collected in their bath water, but once rinsed I see no signs of rust on either one. The AFC rings don't easily swap between kits. I'm not yet brave enough to try being forceful with them. I'm not sure, but it looks like the KingTu AFC rings may be slightly thicker than the EHPro's. With all the scary stories about decks not fitting or getting stuck I'm not yet brave enough to try swapping the decks between kits at all. Each kit came with all three deck versions, S, W, & C. The EHPro came with only a SS AFC ring, but the KingTu kit came with three AFC rings, SS, brass, & black, along with a spare glass window tube. EHPro came in a black box with "EHPro" on it and some kind of UPC code sticker on the back. The KingTu came in cloned Stattqualm packaging
(which strikes me as pointlessly tacky, but I did still buy one.)
Fit and finish on both kits seem good but not great. Neither feels at all flimsy. The exterior surfaces all seem nicely finished, edges smoothed, etc. Most of the interior surfaces are also at least smoothed, but I did find rough grind marks under the lower positive plate on the EHPro's base.
(I couldn't easily remove the KingTu's lower positive plate, so I can't tell you what's down there.) The seams line up well but don't disappear. The threads move easily enough without catching, but I wouldn't call them "buttery." It's about what I'd expect from good knock-off products. For $40-$50 each, they're just fine, but I'd expect more for $170.
(I don't have an authentic Stattqualm Squape or SquapeR to compare these to; I'm just guessing the additional cost of authentics probably gets you more precise machining.) The coating on all the decks and bells looks smooth as far as I can see, no flaking
(yet ... *fingers crossed*) The windows in each are frosted and do feel and sound more like glass than plastic. The spare glass tube from the KingTu kit doesn't flex when squeezed as hard as I'm willing to squeeze an allegedly glass cylinder.
The center pins on both seem to adjust without trouble, but I haven't tested to see how far I can extend them before they lose connectivity. The KingTu has a little black o-ring around the pin head that came along when I unscrewed the pin; The EHPro has a more substantial looking translucent insulator that stayed in the 510 sleeve when I unscrewed the pin; I didn't try to remove it. Neither kit seemed to have any sticky/crusty thread issues, but I worked them all back and forth a couple times just in case. The positive and negative posts
(the ones a build deck slides over and then accept the terminal screws) on the KingTu can be unscrewed without issue. I expected the same behavior on the EHPro, but they're
really stuck in there well. I went as far as using some nylon jaw pliers trying to break them loose before giving up. With a bit of wiggling, the lower positive plate came out of the EHPro base, and it looks like those posts are intentionally fused in, one to the positive plate and one to the base. Both kits' positive plates do wiggle about a little, but I've had no issues with either of them shorting.
The EHPro didn't lose a drop of water sitting upside-down overnight on Monday, so I put the first build on it last night. It's great! After reading this thread I was expecting quite a battle, but it couldn't have been easier. I first smeared some unflavored 80VG/20PG juice around the base's inner o-ring and the outside of the W deck. It pushed into place snugly without too much force, the posts extending just a tiny bit above the surface. I built a coil of eight wraps, 28 ga kanthal a1, around a 3mm screwdriver. It gave me 1.7 Ohms load,
(and that number hasn't varied at all.) I'm using an unbleached organic cotton wick
(not KGD, but some other brand of Japanese cosmetic pads,) enough to feel some drag through the coil, trimmed maybe 1mm past the edges of the deck and gently tucked into the channels along the top. I've got it on my iTaste SVD, VV/VW with 6V/15W max
(yes, I'll "need" a different mod soon, but I'm still learning!) The first tankful got some 70% VG Uncle Junk's Savannah juice. I'm familiar with this juice, and it's proven finicky about builds and wicking in my clone Russian 91. So I tried running the EHPro SquapeR at extremes of power and airflow options. I could force neither gurgles nor dry hits. The sweet spot for me with both flavor and vapor seems to fall in the middle of the ranges anyway. There are no signs of leaking out the base or the seal either, and the only liquid in the drip tip well is obviously from condensation. Now, for the second tankful, I've rinsed, rewicked, and filled with Ripe Vapes Coconut Thai, a 100% VG juice. So far it's doing fine, no signs of the wick drying out. I'm still working out the sweet spot's airflow and power settings for this juice. I'm not trying to make it fail like I was with the first tankful, but no signs of trouble yet. It's still using the first coil, still reading 1.7 Ohm. Really nice vape! I never risked 100% VG in the clone R91, but I like the 70%VG juice's vapor more than what I get from my clone R91 when it's behaving; the flavor is richer, and there seems to be more volume vapor per hit.
(And the flavor is leaps and bounds better than the burnt cotton effect when I mess up my clone R91 - yuk!) Of course the SquapeR system is vastly easier to build, wick and fill than the R91. I also like having no logo on it, leaving it very obviously not authentic.
Neither kit has any engraving under the base like fake serial numbers, thankfully. FWIW, I use high ratio VG juices because I find the 50/50 blends too dehydrating when I use them frequently. I opt for thicker juice instead of vaping less.
My only complaint about the EHPro is that the AFC ring spins more easily than I expected. It's a clone, so clearly there's no guarantee it will work like an authentic. But from what I saw in video reviews of both clones and authentics I was expecting it to require more torque to adjust the AFC ring. This one isn't loose; it's just easier to spin the AFC ring than to screw/unscrew the tank from the base or the base from the mod. I suppose that could be considered a good thing - you wouldn't want it being easy to unscrew the tank when trying only to adjust the air flow. Perhaps I shouldn't complain about this after all.
The KingTu leaks a lot out the windows, but I can't manage to move the glass without using enough force to risk breaking it. Thus, I can't check on the windows' o-rings. Its C deck has no curve, like
the issue AnsonJames mentioned last week with his. Its S deck has a partially blocked center air hole; it looks like there were metal shavings or burs left that got coated with ematal. The W deck, the one I'm most likely to use, looks fine. The nice guy at midsouthtrading got back to me right away after I emailed him about the problems last night. He hadn't heard any other reports of leaking KingTu tanks, so he was going to test one overnight and send it out to me today along with new C and S decks. He asked me to double check that my deck screws were the right size, too, because he's hearing some of the KingTu kits had the wrong size screws. So I installed the W deck and built a coil like I put on the EHPro, wicked it the same, and doused it with as much juice as I could. Then I put the empty tank on top, with the bell/chimney. The resistance stayed stable, and it vaped fine until the wick started to dry out. Then I took the tank back off the base. I didn't feel, hear or see any signs that the screws were scratching inside the bell. My KingTu kit didn't include spare screws
(the EHPro kit did,) so I asked for a set anyway if he had some handy.
So, hopefully my leaky KingTu tank is an anomaly, and I'll soon have a working replacement. The base is promising, but I can't yet test how well the system wicks.
I'm not great at taking pictures, but I might be able to manage if there's something specific about either kit you'd like to see. So feel free to ask, can't hurt!
Cheers & Good luck!
Luny
Everything. New chips, better wire, fdv 510s and good buttons. I've also decided from this point on, I probably should just make my own mods
roxy, you've become one of my vaping role models!
