The Carto Assassin - Dark juices killing cartos

[AdariousMistdancer]

This is now the 5th carto in as many days I've tried with this juice. The same thing every time. Initial fill fine ... one or two refills of 4 or 5 drops per normal (like I would with any clear liquid), and then the cotton mushrooms and after a pull or two goes black on top, not absorbing anything more without it going straight through the air hole. It's done this on both 2.0ohm and 3.0s consistently. This is a white chocolate flavor, it's not nearly as dark as a coffee flavor. Cartos aren't cheap if you start going through 1 a day, so what's the deal?

I've also tried this same stuff on an atty, although I'm fairly sure the Joye atty I got was garbage, as all flavors tasted nasty and burnt from the getgo at any voltage between 3 and 4. Then I tried a CE2 tank, and it worked for 1.6m and then stopped wicking entirely. This is currently the only bottle I have left so this is getting frustrating to say the least.

Further, considering that all the juices I get are 30/70 vg/pg, what difference is it that the darkness makes? Clear liquids such as blackberry work outstanding so I fail to see the cause of the dark menace?

 

[Uncle Willie]

Dark liquids commonly clog a carto quickly .. just the nature of the beast .. sediment

 

[AttyPops]

A..M..dancer... Sure it isn't too thick?

OK. So this rest is pure conjecture just for fun. Let's kick it around.

Caramel is burnt sugar (well, caramelization reaction sugar... I think... very fascinating stuff for something that starts out as a fairly pure chemical in crystal form.). Then add milk/cream. You have caramel. Now... a lot of flavor recipes have a caramel flavor in them.

Supposedly, this is not made from sugar, but from individual flavor molecules. However, the process of making caramel basically breaks the sugar down and makes "flavor chemicals". lol. So, since I'm neither a chemist nor a flavor maker, I can't tell you what goes into "caramel flavoring". (nor caramel color, for that matter). However, if you buy a caramel flavor from many vendors IT IS WEAK. Pretty much diluted with either PG or VG. Bet that, unless some flavor vendor has pulled a rabbit out of a hat, at least some of the problem molecules that would cause real caramel to gunk a coil must be present in the caramel flavorings... because it's necessary to even approach the taste of caramel.

OF course, this doesn't account for all "dark" flavor chemicals. And I also note that EM is clear (but is also rumored to gunk stuff up).

OTOH, the DIY key lime that I'm vaping right now is tart, and not a problem so far. I'm on day two with the same carto.

So EM is probably less of an offender than caramel. And there are other offenders... supposedly most of them are darker in color for some reason.

Of course, you'll never really know what's in your juice from vendor X anyway, and how much is caramel, EM or other. "Artificial Flavoring" is all you'll get for ingredients.

So... sweet juice = gunk juice. EM may be a bit better (and is clear)... but will still clog.

 

[Uncle Willie]

I've had liquid with so much sediment that after less than a day, you could push the gunk thru the carto hole with a paperclip ..

 

[Caelius Felix]

If you've found a juice you like, you may have to live with changing out cartos daily. I do. At maybe $1.35 apiece (standard size Boges from CCV, free postage), you're still way ahead of what the tobacco habit was probably costing you.

 

[AdariousMistdancer]

I think I'd rather just swear off dark juices entirely. I'd switch now if I had anything else. One of the most recent ones of note I wish I had another bottle of now, is Springvapor's (Nik's) Blackberry Breeze; crystal clear and great. There are a couple of dull yellow shaded ones I don't mind, but no more brown or black .. or for that matter chocolate anything. The other 2 are BWBrew cola which is awesome, and Orange Dream from SVapor.

I never considered what Atty said, and it does make sense ... the burnt-sugar look is precisely how the top of the carto looks when it takes a dump. I'm planning to try doing DIY soon as well, so we'll see how that goes.

Still have another 5 days to make it .. hopefully the larger ce2 tank handles it after this carto takes a dump. I have to drip straight into it as the wicks failed after one tank of the same stuff.

Thanks

 

[AttyPops]

If it's a CE2 I think you can clean them........but I use atomizers mostly, so IDK. I happen to be using up my 1-year old single box of cartos at the moment. Show you how often (NOT!) I use them.

I use atomizers and drip. I recommend having a spare atty around, if nothing else, to sample juice. There's also a thread about "Why does anyone even bother dripping anymore since cartos are soooo cool." or some such nonsense. Always OK to ask a question, particularly when that uninformed about dripping. I know I know. Bad me talking about another thread behind it's back.

 

[Butters78]

In theory wouldnt a bottom feeder rectify the situation? U can clean an atty alot easier when it gets gunked up.

 

[Geiseric]

Ce2s are very easy to clean. Pull off the tube, spread the wicks out horizontally, and run a hand torch over the wicks until they glow white. To clean the inside part that you cant get to with a torch, I dry burn them. May be a bad idea, seems some people think so. Hasn't caused me any problems. Ce2s only die for me when the coil breaks off, which is pretty rare.

 

[BHam]

Dark liquids commonly clog a carto quickly .. just the nature of the beast .. sediment

Uncle Willie said it before I could. Every dark juice I use clogs at some point. Not much I can do though.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

 

[sawitall]

i have never had this problem..than again ill vape a carto/clearo way past burning the wick and just compensate for the burning taste by completely saturating the atomizer part with liquid. works for me, i give it about 3 days and my cartos are pretty much being dripped on.

 

[donnah]

I had this problem back last year when I was using darker, sweeter juices from a certain vendor. Within 1 day the flavor was stale and unvapable and with one juice.. an atty a day would just stop working.. dead, no warning, no burning, still wet.. it would just stop working.. the only thing I could figure was the juice.

People kept telling me that cartos were cheap yada yada.. but tossing a carto or two every day gets expensive. I started diying my own juices.. I vaped plain unflavored for awhile and that carto lasted weeks! Unflavored is pretty good on it's own and I still use it, especially when I get the "can't taste my juice" blues. But I do like a bit of flavor and sweetness so I started experimenting to find a flavored juice that I loved and was satisfying but also carto friendly. I now have two good recipes that make up my daily vapes and my cartos last forever in tanks. Well... not exactly forever but with one mix.. it stays good for so long that I finally decide enough is enough and go ahead and change it. The carto I'm using now (in a tank with this recipe) has been used daily since April 24th and shows no signs of slowing down.. it still crackles and the flavor is still great.

It just wasn't worth it to me to have to throw away cartos every day. I tried flushing the carto to maybe be able to keep using it but it was hit or miss.. some cartos that I cleaned did work and taste alright (but never "like new") after a cleaning or two but many of them still retained that stale, dirt taste and I was wasting too much juice trying to get them to taste alright again.. cause if it still tasted yucky.. I had to throw it away and I just wasted the juice I put in it.

I'm not fond of attys anymore and even use cartos in my bottom feeders. But even being bottom fed.. those juices still made the carto unvapable within a day or two at most. I thought bottom feeding might help and it did a little.. but not enough.

I don't even watch juice reviews anymore because it doesn't matter how wonderful that juice is.. if it gunks up a carto in a day or starts tasting stale in a day.. then it's not worth it and I'm not interested. And I've yet to see a juice review where the reviewer talks about how long it will last in that carto before it gets unusable.

 

[AdariousMistdancer]

A juice that makes a carto last nearly a month and has flavor to it? You certainly have my attention. I've never once had a carto last more than a week. I'm sure a better device would make a difference too, as this Lavatrash sucks for the most part. Hopefully going to be solving that issue soon..but until then, this is all I have, with *gasp* no backup. Unfortunately budget restrictions stop me from jumping out there and getting 150 to 200 dollar mods...and being VV is a requirement for me.

 

[donnah]

I'll post my recipe when I get home and have more time to type

 

[donnah]

I mix an unflavored base of 70% PG 30% VG and 12 mg nic. Then for every 10 ml I add ONE drip of Flavor Apprentice Caramel Cappuccino .. 1 drop of sweetener (the one I'm using now is what tasty vapor sells but I guess any sweetener will do) and 2 drops of either Capella's vanilla custard or Flavor Apprentice sweet cream. shake and vape Any more than ONE drop of the caramel capp and it will be too strong. You can add another drop of the custard or cream but too much will drown out the caramel capp.. especially the sweet cream and then you're left with a whipped cream kinda flavor.

The percentages of the base and the mg doesn't really matter. I also vape the unflavored base when I get tired of flavors. My other recipe is a vanilla cookie. For every 10ml of unflavored base I add a couple drops of capella's vanilla custard, a drop of FlavorArt cookie and a drop of sweetener. Too much of the cookie and after a few days it's starts to get a stale taste.. so I use the cookie sparingly. If you're interested in diy visit us over at the diy forum and you can PM me and I'll help you buy what you need.

 

[Unforeseen]

Moved from General E-Smoking Discussion to Atomizer, Cartomizer, and Tank Discussion

 

[Honkey Kong]

In theory wouldnt a bottom feeder rectify the situation? U can clean an atty alot easier when it gets gunked up.

It sounds like it would, but sadly that is not the case.

I am using an Old Goat (until a Reo lands) with 2.0 Ohm Boges and Mt Baker Vapor's Cinnamon Roll. The taste is just beautiful, but it only lasts 2 Bottles (roughly 5-6ml) before I have a black top. I ran into the same problems using this Juice in a Tank (M1A1 Buzz Tanks) with an Ego and with a Lava Tube, it did not finish a whole Tank of Juice. I also tried going back to the Smok Tech 1.7 Ohm Cartos.

It is the Juices that do it, but only certain sweet Juices, not all of them. This is a yellow-brown Juice, not clear nor really dark. Realyl sad for me because I LOVE this Juice