Vivi Nova Rebuild tutorial

[KevNewEngland]

I got some 32 gauge A1 Kanthal yesterday and made my first coil. I was skeptical about it working because I thought I may have had a coil or two touching, but I put it all together, resistance read about 2-2.2 ohms and it fired nicely. Vapor was not quite as much as the stock head but I suspect it's just a matter of tinkering with the wick, which in my case, is cheesecloth. Question: do you boil the cheesecloth? I haven't seen that mentioned here. All in all, this was easier than I thought even though it was awkward at first, winding the coil. I used a paper clip and the most difficult part was keeping the cheesecloth nice and neat. Glad to be in the rebuilders club!

 

[Neya]

I don't boil cheesecloth, but mine is meant for food. ? Maybe I should.

Note: I'm still new to all this, but IMO cheesecloth is FINICKY when built... As in, making it perfect size etc....
When it works, its awesome... When it doesnt I could throw my nova out a window. Not that its the cheesecloths fault, it's my own user error in building.

I also did the cotton on top of the coil when I rebuilt my newest ones, but didnt use battan/ball, I just cut a tiny piece of cheesecloth and laid it over.
Not sure if its cause I did better wicks, wires, or the lay piece on top but so far vapor production is WAY better, flavor is good (I think I had something on my hands when I rolled these up, took some time to vape it out, but now its GOOD). TH is meh... not great - not horrible... I can't seem to get all 3 right hahaha. As it stands, I like it best now, as I'm not a big throat hit person anyways.

Must get more wire, in 32g... At least my first purchase of 34g was only 25ft.

 

[KevNewEngland]

IMO cheesecloth is FINICKY when built... As in, making it perfect size etc....
When it works, its awesome... When it doesnt I could throw my nova out a window.

Although this is my first coil, I have to agree about the cheesecloth being finicky. I think I'll figure it out in time. I will also add that little piece at the top. That sounds like it would help a lot.

 

[vdice]

this cotton 4 strand yarn with a bunny ball on top on my mini nova sure is boring. can't get any more vapor or flavor. just vaping my brains out. NOW WHAT?

 

[BJ43]

I don't boil cheesecloth, but mine is meant for food. ? Maybe I should.

Note: I'm still new to all this, but IMO cheesecloth is FINICKY when built... As in, making it perfect size etc....
When it works, its awesome... When it doesnt I could throw my nova out a window. Not that its the cheesecloths fault, it's my own user error in building.


I also did the cotton on top of the coil when I rebuilt my newest ones, but didnt use battan/ball, I just cut a tiny piece of cheesecloth and laid it over.
Not sure if its cause I did better wicks, wires, or the lay piece on top but so far vapor production is WAY better, flavor is good (I think I had something on my hands when I rolled these up, took some time to vape it out, but now its GOOD). TH is meh... not great - not horrible... I can't seem to get all 3 right hahaha. As it stands, I like it best now, as I'm not a big throat hit person anyways.

Must get more wire, in 32g... At least my first purchase of 34g was only 25ft.

Try the cotton ball or batten mini wick on top and control TH with voltage, every wick coil has a sweet spot, you just have to find it. If you have good vaper the only other variable for TH comes from temperature so adjust voltage.

 

[iKN0WaGH0ST]

I don't know if it is just me, but when I tried putting the smaller cotton ball wick on top, I believe that I overwicked. Vapor production and th went way down, and vapor was cold. Upon cranking the voltage, I got a burnt taste. After removing the second wick, the nice warm vape returned, and the vapor increased. Hmm.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[BJ43]

I don't know if it is just me, but when I tried putting the smaller cotton ball wick on top, I believe that I overwicked. Vapor production and th went way down, and vapor was cold. Upon cranking the voltage, I got a burnt taste. After removing the second wick, the nice warm vape returned, and the vapor increased. Hmm.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

Great you found your sweet spot without the over wick, I never could, did you do the cutouts in the silicone cap so the wicks had room. Here are the two I am using tonight, cheesecloth with batten over and candle with batten over, both 2.4 ohms yet have a big difference in the voltage for my sweet spot.

 

[BJ43]

I don't recommend the over wick on LR 3 or 4 wraps, not enough heating area to keep up with the wicking. Tried a 1.8 ohm with 4 wraps and it was not very good.
I hesitate to give advice and everyone should understand that everyone has different likes. I need loads of vaper. A good vaper volume for me is when I have to exhale twice to empty my lungs from one inhale. So if your not looking for monster vaper forget the over wick, many wraps, and higher voltage.

 

[munchichee]

I have now made over 50 cotton wick combinations on the vivi nova and with all, if I put a small batten cotton wick over the coil it improves 100%. I read so much about over wicking and I use a lot of wick and have never experienced over wicking or flooding. I think a lot of people do not give it enough time to break in. It takes a good half hour of vaping before any cotton wick produces satisfactory vapor. Voltage control is very critical with cotton wicks as each one is slightly different and finding the sweet spot is important.

I just can't get this setup vaping right. Fair warning - it all could be related to my juice though, because Nitelitevapor juice is known to have issues in clearos or any top coil wicking i guess. I just sold every other juice I had sitting around so can't do much to compare right now, but previously I vaped bobas and gorilla juice all VG for weeks and never had a problem with the novas. Ever since I found NLV I've had nothing but inconsistent vapes and headaches with them. But NLV tanked is soooooo good.... I'm 90% sure whatever flavoring NLV uses in several juices prevents it from wicking well. Although it is 65/35 flavor and vapor is muted even with stock heads. I've tried adding PG to some bounty hunter, then again with VG just to see what happened. Nothing really except for diluting the flavor even more.

It seems the bigger diameter wick I use and the longer it is the worse the results are. This goes for cotton candle wick, unbraided candle wick, gauze, cheesecloth, batten, and silica. I would even trim all long wick stock heads down to a nub like their predecessors. But the shorter cotton wicks give dry hits easily. Yes I have given them hours to break in, start vaping cautiously at low voltage and try to get it going but never find an acceptable vape. If i don't taste the wet hot cotton flavor immediately, then a 2.4-2.6 ohm coil will taste great at 3.2v but produce little vapor. after slowly trying to break it in at least 1-2 hours i'm up to 3.5 or 3.7 and vapor increases but less flavor and start to tell if I go any higher it will burn. some wicks I think the coil is too loose because it gurgles and tastes like it's starting to flood but never gets bad. the candle wick just looks like it's braided too tight to wick fast enough. I've opened up the wick channel on several heads like the OP did hoping this was the magical solution, but with cheesecloth it's so temperamental it usually expands so much it plugs up the air hole. same with using the batten on top. first i tried a piece the same size you show in this picture but it swelled up to cover the entire inner diameter of the head, there was air flow, but it was too saturated to vape. tried a smaller and thinner piece but vaped same as if it wasnt there. i've done a few coils with doubled legs and still get same results. haven't seen a burn mark on any of the 25-30 heads yet so haven't bothered with doubling legs lately. i think i'm gonna go try with 100% unflavored PG cause that may be all i have left other than NLV. not sure if I've finished all my thoughts here, but I'm gonna be ...... if the juice is the culprit this whole time. Has anyone tried vaping NLV Bounty hunter or Gold with a cotton wick?

 

[BJ43]

Munchichee: Your writeup has made me curious, let me know what flavor of NLF you are having problems with and I will order some and try. Really want to know if different flavors make that big a difference.

 

[munchichee]

well I was using bounty hunter and gold. I took that juice out, rolled a fresh FAT cheesecloth wick and did 6 wraps @ 3 ohms on a head with the hole bored out, filled with a mixure of NLV fruit3, vapeport, and a few drops of vanilla straight. broke it in over the next hour and it's been vaping great on the buzz pro somewhere around 4.5v or the yellow mark. rolled a thin cheesecloth wick with 5 wraps at 2.2 ohms on an unmodified head, filled it with some CC house blend and it's breaking in fine as well. trying again now with another thick wick with hole drilled back on the tank with bounty hunter so will update ya.

 

[BJ43]

NLF has credit card acceptance issues and aren't accepting any credit card orders. So I will have to wait until they resolve their problem.

 

[munchichee]

yes a lot of us are waiting to order. then more waiting for several weeks for it to ship.

 

[munchichee]

I don't recommend the over wick on LR 3 or 4 wraps, not enough heating area to keep up with the wicking. Tried a 1.8 ohm with 4 wraps and it was not very good.
I hesitate to give advice and everyone should understand that everyone has different likes. I need loads of vaper. A good vaper volume for me is when I have to exhale twice to empty my lungs from one inhale. So if your not looking for monster vaper forget the over wick, many wraps, and higher voltage.

can you snap a top view pic with the silicone cap off? trying to see why adding the batten isn't helping for me. when i knotch the cap it always gets deformed and squashed after tightening top cap

 

[gdeal]

can you snap a top view pic with the silicone cap off? trying to see why adding the batten isn't helping for me. when i knotch the cap it always gets deformed and squashed after tightening top cap

Just got three Vivi Nova's in today.Cheesecloth with batton. I used 40 threads, and 2mm twisted diameter batton Slight notch in cap.

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/1861/imag0072yd.jpg
High res. version

 

[BJ43]

can you snap a top view pic with the silicone cap off? trying to see why adding the batten isn't helping for me. when i knotch the cap it always gets deformed and squashed after tightening top cap

I don't put the silicone cap on until after I have tighten the top cap.

 

[classwife]

Moved to Rebuildable Atomizer Systems from The Modding Forum - Atomizer Mods

 

[iKN0WaGH0ST]

Great you found your sweet spot without the over wick, I never could, did you do the cutouts in the silicone cap so the wicks had room. Here are the two I am using tonight, cheesecloth with batten over and candle with batten over, both 2.4 ohms yet have a big difference in the voltage for my sweet spot.

I am doing the cutouts, but tomorrow I'm going to try to use a cap without the cuttouts. I don't remember running into all this inconsistency before I started changing things up with different wicking styles, little modification, etc. Every now and then I do run into the problem with decreased vapor production, but it increases afterwards. I am currently running 2.9 ohms at 4.7 volts.

 

[munchichee]

I don't put the silicone cap on until after I have tighten the top cap.

ummmm what? i didn't mean tightening the head - I meant the knurled top cap of the nova. Tightening it onto the the silicone cap is what keeps it from leaking in your mouth. So either we are on the wrong page, or do you actually assemble everything and then squeeze the cap through that hole, manage to line up the notches with the wick, and then somehow create a seal? lol. it's all irrelevant anyway now- I'm convinced that bounty hunter and Gold (to a lesser extent) are the culprits causing my problems.

I went and repo'd some non-NLV juice I gave to my sister earlier and quickly built a few heads to analyze. One with straight candle wick, another with (2) 20-25 thread cheesecloth wicks and batten on top, and one ss mesh-cotton hybrid wick (my first successful mesh wick) All three ended up at 2.4 ohms even though I didn't even bother to check how many wraps I was doing. I did not run into a single problem on ANY of these setups using random juices. They are still breaking in and performance continues to get better - the only problem I'm having now is that I can't stand vaping any of them! Also some lightheaded-ness and occasional nausea. Although I'm no longer singing the wick and coil blues, I still can't enjoy my victory with my favorite juices! Well that's not true, the vivi with the mesh-cotton hybrid wick got filled with whatever bounty hunter and gold I extracted from the tanks before I started. so far it tastes the best but is producing the least amount of vapor.

 

[Neya]

Try the cotton ball or batten mini wick on top and control TH with voltage, every wick coil has a sweet spot, you just have to find it. If you have good vaper the only other variable for TH comes from temperature so adjust voltage.

I've found if I crank the voltage I get burnt cotton flavors. Not as bad as burnt silica though(gag). in the 3 ohm coil range the highest I can go is about 4-4.2V