Coils can overheat if there's not enough juice available. Too tight of wick means not enough room for juice. Try loosening that up. Also wattage you have to be concerned about. First and foremost, you should NEVER use a mech mod without owning an ohmreader of some sort to know what you're actually working with. That will give you the resistance. With that you can find out what you're working with. Amperage = Voltage/resistance, and Amperage*Voltage=Wattage.
http://www.steam-engine.org/coil.asp Is also a great help for estimating your coils (and building your own). If your coils are say 7 wraps you may have a .3Ω coil. On a single battery mech mod you're looking at 12 amp pull and therefor about 45watts of power. With a single wire build that may be enough to scorch your wick, especially if it's tightly packed and there's not much juice readily available for the coil to vaporize. The juice doesn't just vaporize but also cools down the coil, keeping it from getting hot enough to burn the wick.
Basically it's a lot of basic physics. With mech mods it's all about your wire and wick, that's basically all you get to decide (and having safe batteries, important note). Regulated mods are suggested for new users as it introduces another variable to play with making it easier to "make it work" as well as having protection elements built in.
On a regulated mod you can tweak the wattage usually though there are some that you adjust the voltage... then there's temperature control but lets not get into that. So with the wattage controls if you notice it burning you can simply turn the wattage down. 45w being too much you can turn it down to say 20w and try there and move up till you find the sweet spot.
Anyways, felt it was worth giving a quick rundown, but for now try a looser wicking, you should be able to pull the material through your coils pretty easily, if you're stretching the cotton (or whatever) or tweaking the coils while you pull through that's too much material. It should be snug but not enough to resist. That's where I'd start. I'd also HIGHLY suggest investing in a regulated mod. You can grab something like the Eleaf iStick 100w for something like $30, then some batteries and a charger for another $20-40 depending on the charger(not limited to the iStick just a cheap solid option, there are tons and I suggest making a thread in the "regulated mods" section if you're going that route, you'll be inundated with tons of suggestions). It's a big initial investment but it's ohh so worth it considering the safety (who wants to be caught holding a pipe bomb?) and the variable wattage is a very handy tool to help you find a solid vape. Mech mods and especially hybrid mods should really be in the hands of someone who fully understands the physics behind what's going on. I mean no offense, I say it in the spirit of safety, but I fully believe that you should have to be able to write out the physics formulas by memory and be able to produce answers to even purchase a mech mod, much less a hybrid mod which can have addition safety concerns (arcing between the battery and pin).
If you do want to stick with what you got, I suggest doing plenty of research on Ohm's Law, learning those simple formula's I put above, knowing the algebra to tweak and combine them as needed, and looking up "Mooch's Battery information" on google, he's the battery guru and it's well worth reading for the safety of yourself and those around you.
This got pretty long but I hope it made sense (I'm a little tipsy as usually, maybe more so as I have the rest of the week off for my Birthday!

) if it does I think it has some good points.