Do you know the fastest ways to kill your coils? As vapers, we all have that sinking feeling when the flavor starts to subside from our e-liquid, or even worse, taking a hit on a brand new coil and immediately being smacked in the taste buds by the acrid taste of dry burnt cotton. Over the next couple of minutes we’ll be taking a look at which issues rank highest in creating havoc with vaping devices and what you can do to avoid them.
While this post is aimed mainly at newer vapers, the information it contains may be helpful to everyone. Everything below is the opinion of the author and in no way represents the publications overall views.
Killing The Coil Before You Start
It’s possible to destroy your vaping experience as soon as you take your first hit. I am no different from anyone else – I learned from my mistakes long ago. Many people have never been told that they should prime their coil with e-liquid before they even think about taking their first hit. By making sure that your coils are saturated with juice before you put any power to them, you are making sure that the cotton inside is soaked and safe. The number of times I’ve heard from people who, normally on the first coil they install themselves, complain that the factory sent them a bad one. Ensure that the cotton has had time to soak through to the center, and then wait some more. If you’re patient, you can avoid this problem every time. If you’re using pre-built coils for tanks, this mistake can become costly, quickly, so the sooner you learn to wait, the more money you can save.
Stop Vaping At The Coils Maximum Limit
Just because the coil you just put into the tank says it is good up to 70 watts, doesn’t necessarily mean you should have it turned up that high. If you want to make sure you don’t damage the coil, crank it back slightly. The higher your wattage, the faster you will need to change it out. Not only do you run the risk of running into a dry hit along the way (Game Over!), but by going through the juice at higher temperatures you are more at risk of gunking the coils out.
The longer you are able to keep the carbon build up off the wires, the longer your pleasant tasting vape experience will last. Most pre-built coils now have a range laser etched directly into them. Make sure you pay attention and try to vape in the middle, if not the lower end of the range.
[blockquote author=”Blake Brown, owner of GuideToVaping.com” style=”2″]Most of the GuideToVaping viewers know that I absolutely love Kanger’s OCC coils. Though these coils recommend a range between 15W-60W, I’ll typically stay around 40W-42W. By doing this, I can make coils last 3 weeks, and even up to a months time.[/blockquote]
Know What’s In The E-Liquid
Another quick and easy way to gunk out the coils and make you wish you were sucking on a bag of pennies, is simply by using e-liquid packed full of sweeteners. The more sugary goodness that the e-liquid contains, the more gunk it is going to leave behind.
This one is a trade-off however, personally I would rather pay for new coils than move away from my favorite flavor profiles. There are some companies who are putting out stellar flavors without the need for all the sweeteners, but if you’re like me, that sweet tooth will prevail.
Make Sure Enough E-Liquid Is Getting To The Coils
If you build your own coils, you may be putting too much or too little cotton in the coils. If you don’t get it just right, chances are you will end up with the dry hit from hell. Finding the Goldilocks spot of wicks is an endeavor that may require time, patience, and practice, but you will get there in the end.
For the longest time, I was not packing enough cotton into my builds, so I would think I was getting a dry hit when I was, in fact, burning the top of my coils because there was no cotton touching them. Watch some videos, there are plenty of people who will show you the best way to accomplish this — or follow this for a quick “how to”.
As long as you follow the ideas shown here, you should be able to keep your coils safe and clean for considerably longer in the future. Good luck with your vaping experience, and if you can think of any other tips we should have included, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Another common problem I used to run in frequently that would burn up my coil quickly was forgetting to fill my tank back up with juice before it ran completely out of juice. I can’t count how many times I either wasn’t paying attention or just plain forgot about checking my juice level and took a huge draw only to get that AWFUL dry hit! Talk about GROSS!! I burned up many coils long before they should have by forgetting to do this simple act. Now that I have been vaping a while I have gotten alot better about it, but it still happen on rare occasions. Do yourself a favor and keep an eye on your juice level- and refill your tank well before it even gets close to running out – that way you can avoid this problem all together. Vape Strong!!
I ran a nautilus dry as a bone today. It’s so easy to do. I guess because I never had to pay attention to the amount of a traditional cig I had left, I don’t think of the amount of liquid that’s left. I’m so bad that I’m mostly doing tc but when I’m doing a regular tank without tc I feel confused when I run dry. I kind of made tc my safety control.
People look at temperature control as this advanced feature that was meant only for more experienced vapers, but I believe it’s a feature more-so for the new vapers, as it’s merely that added layer of protection. Great story, and thank you for sharing Timothy!