Pop, pop, pop!

[Khassy]

I'm having a problem with my OBS Frost Wyrm rta. It's constantly popping juice and I don't know how to fix it. More cotton, less cotton, lower wattage, higher wattage - nothing seems to help. It's really irritating. I'm using the coils it came with (pictured below). Any ideas?

 

[Jriley]

Im curious to know about this, my wife hates it when her builds dont crackle and pop she will have me redo her stuff until it does lol .. I dont mind either way but im curious if thats good.. The way it seems it makes me feel like its being efficient that noise i dont know how but that noise in my head just says "workin good" im probably wrong tho lol!

 

[Rabbit Slayer]

I haven't noticed my rda popping at me since I went back to using normal round wire builds, but it might just be a coincidence

 

[BKTOAD]

Might try:
More airflow
More cotton
Taking a deeper inhale
Another type of coil

Sometimes if i don't vape a build for over 2 days it will pop like crazy. Juice gets trapped in crevices and the sudden high heat makes it pop.

 

[Foggz]

try using non twisted coils

 

[Mattp169]

the popping in my experience is always too much juice on the coil
like if your coil ramps slowly then it may pop when its cold an dyou first fire it
or if the coil is flooded
or its been sitting for a day in a tank unused

I dont have that one
but looking at photos the wicking channels look huge
so I would pack them with cotton to make sure you dont have juice flowing past them and flooding your coil when you tilt it
if you have to, just tear off some cotton to pack the holes better i did that on my limitless plus a few time still i got the hang of the right amount of wick

try different coils period, usually the ones included with most rtas arent the greatest.

higher watts should vaporize the juice faster and reduce ramp up time which should help as well

 

[Carambrda]

After you mounted and dry fired the coils, have you re-tightened the screws of the binding posts so the legs of the coils are all making proper contact? Here's a video review I found by googling... you can see how he wicks it (albeit IMO he could have done a slightly better job there, as the parts of the wicks that sit between the coils and deck are pulled a bit too snug... especially the one that's on the bottom left of the screen as he brings the deck close to the camera so I'd recommend at least loosening that one up just a hair), and you can hear no popping going on.

EDIT ─ In the comments below the video on YouTube there's some more tips about how to properly wick it up.

 

[Cormic]

Twisted wire tends to spit a lot in my limited experience.

 

[Heartsdelight]

My thoughts are it shouldn't crackle & pop for a smooth vape.

 

[BKTOAD]

Twisted wire tends to spit a lot in my limited experience.

Yep, mine too.

Not a fan of twisted builds at all. Take a long time to ramp and cool down. Vape hot. Maybe the slightest flavor improvement over simple coils (but not much). Springy to coil. And, the violent popping.

 

[Khassy]

After you mounted and dry fired the coils, have you re-tightened the screws of the binding posts so the legs of the coils are all making proper contact? Here's a video review I found by googling... you can see how he wicks it (albeit IMO he could have done a slightly better job there, as the parts of the wicks that sit between the coils and deck are pulled a bit too snug... especially the one that's on the bottom left of the screen as he brings the deck close to the camera so I'd recommend at least loosening that one up just a hair), and you can hear no popping going on.

EDIT ─ In the comments below the video on YouTube there's some more tips about how to properly wick it up.

Thanks! I never would have thought of feeding the cotton up through the wick holes then back down the other side. I have just been wicking as I would any other tank, then fluffing and stuffing down into the holes. I do keep them a bit more fluffed than he has them. The wick holes are huge, as @Mattp169 noted. I've been worried about overstuffing the coil but maybe I just don't have enough cotton in them still. Guess I'll futz around with it and see if I can get it to work better.

 

[Carambrda]

Twisted wire tends to spit a lot in my limited experience.

If the coils are new, just dry fire them a lot. But also make sure not to overheat the deck whilst you're doing this... so just give it some love and patience instead. (Same with Kanthal coils... the metallic taste that people often complain about will disappear if you keep dry firing them a lot before you start using the coils.) Let the whole thing cool down again before you proceed with wicking it up, or else you'll risk baking the cotton and or getting your fingers burned.

 

[Khassy]

Yep, mine too.

Not a fan of twisted builds at all. Take a long time to ramp and cool down. Vape hot. Maybe the slightest flavor improvement over simple coils (but not much). Springy to coil. And, the violent popping.

I've got several other non-twisted coils. Guess I'll try some of them.

 

[Carambrda]

Thanks! I never would have thought of feeding the cotton up through the wick holes then back down the other side. I have just been wicking as I would any other tank, then fluffing and stuffing down into the holes. I do keep them a bit more fluffed than he has them. The wick holes are huge, as @Mattp169 noted. I've been worried about overstuffing the coil but maybe I just don't have enough cotton in them still. Guess I'll futz around with it and see if I can get it to work better.

Yes fluffing is good (if you don't tear up the long cotton fibers by doing it), but I think the people who wrote in the comments below the video may also be right that you should rest the cotton on top of the holes instead of putting it through the holes.

 

[Khassy]

Yes fluffing is good (if you don't tear up the long cotton fibers by doing it), but I think the people who wrote in the comments below the video may also be right that you should rest the cotton on top of the holes instead of putting it through the holes.

I tried resting the cotton on top of the holes and still had the popping problem. (The first time I wicked it, I accidentally put the cotton in the air holes and nearly got a hernia trying to inhale. lol) However, I just redid it all and it seems to have fixed the problem. At least it so far. I switched to Alien coils, and put quite a bit more cotton than I had previously used. I didn't Scottish roll the cotton this time, just fluffed it really well and have it reaching down into the tank more (I use it as rta rather than rda). Running it at 80 watts, .16 ohms. No popping, loads of cloud (more than I like, actually, harder to hide from The Dementor), and great flavor.

Thanks everyone, I knew I could count on you all for help!

 

[Carambrda]

Here's some more tips about wicking. In the video below, it's not an RTA / RDTA... but the same principle of tucking enough cotton inside the coils still definitely applies IMO.

Also IMO... instead of letting all that perfectly good juice just go to waste like Yosh did in his video, you could achieve the same thing by just using pure VG instead because it's a whole lot cheaper. (I don't use as much cotton as he does, though... and also I just skip his idea of letting wicks go almost completely dry before use.)

Another thing I like to do is to gently pulse at very low wattage to force the coils to soak up the juice whilst I'm juicing them up, as that helps against spilling juice all over the mod. After the wicks are finally saturated with juice (IMO it takes a couple minutes of extra patience if you want the end result to wick better), I find that there's always tiny fluffs and individual cotton fibers sticking out of them everywhere so I just try to just gently comb those over by carefully rubbing against them with the side of the sharp tip of my cotton hook tool─and very gently budding without actually pushing against the wicks, until all looks smooth enough. Else, vaping on the new wick just keeps irritating my throat until finally it sets in.

 

[Khassy]

Good tips. I haven't had any problem wicking any of my other tanks/rtas, just the Frost Wyrm. No idea why it was giving me such a hard time to figure out. I have an OBS Engine as well, and never had a problem with it. But regardless, it seems to be working fine now so I'm not going to worry about it.

 

[strigamort]

Interesting. My attys have all been popping since I went to twisted coils on all decks. I thought it was the cotton, I thought it was because they sat (although even chain vaping they pop). My gf doesn't like my goon because it shoots hot juice out the single air opening. I actually like it, but I'm a little crazy.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

 

[Carambrda]

, but I'm a little crazy.

No worries... you're not alone!

 

[HondaDavidson]

You think twisted wire pops.. just wait till you try claptons or other wrapped wire or braided wire builds...

Popping happens when cool juice comes in contact with a hot coil..... is also the sound of vaporizing or atomizer juice... big vapor particles vs small ones....

Controlling pop us about BALANCING the watts - wicking - air and coil masss.
It can be caused by too much and too little wick watts air and mass.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

 

[Khassy]

I may have gone a WEE bit overboard with the length of the cotton.

 

[Mattp169]

been there done that on my limitless plus it doesnt seem to have a major negative effect but it does seem to taste more cottonny to me

 

[Khassy]

been there done that on my limitless plus it doesnt seem to have a major negative effect but it does seem to taste more cottonny to me

The only big effect it seemed to have is it sucked up all the juice. I trimmed it much closer to the bottom of the coil section.