goddammit. you just
HAD to post another thing that i felt the need to reply to, didn't you?
ok, so i forgot to update my investigatory escapades with regards to the v3 and v4. first off, all the problems with the v4 that i listed in that post are mooted now, except one. I still find it far far harder to fill the v4 via the bottom fill port than the v3. I don't actually get the
leaking anymore (doubled up on the chimney-stem o-rings), and it doesn't backup from the fill port as badly anymore. but that being said, it is still
definitely more of a pain to fill than the v3, period, and i think i know why.
first the pain. with the v3, i flip it over, take the screw out, whip out any old juice bottle, and with carefree delight i just squirt away, barely paying attention, and continue haphazardly squirting until the juice level flows up and over the side window. close'er down, flip'er over, and vape. never a care in the world. amazing. for 3 milliliters, which is at least a couple of solid lung-hits
with the v4, on the other hand.... I flip it over, take the screw out, and make sure there is ZERO juice above the fill window. this usually involves waiting for a minute or two while some straggler bits of juice slowly creep down the sides of the tank. then i tilt it at about 45 degrees with the fill port upwards, stick a needle-tipped bottle in, and
sloowwwwwwlllly squeeze juice in until the entire side window area is filled. this does not take as long as you'd think, because the juice all pools up there while i'm filling, just above the spot where the chimney narrows down. i then stop filling, and wait patiently as that batch of juice slowly drains down into the lower part of the tank. once the window is mostly clear again, i repeat this process. and then again. and so on. It usually takes about 5 total fill cycles until there is no more draining, which means the tank is full of five milliliters of pure enjoyment.
so. why does the juice gush down the sides of the v3, happily filling the entire chamber like liquid puppies (don't visualize that) while the v4 stubbornly raises its nose, demanding that you observe proper decorum and wait patiently for your vaping satisfaction?
it is (i think) a matter of simple mechanics. if you disassemble the v3 and v4, they seem basically the same, with just a longer chimney stem and correspondingly longer tank to separate the two. if, however, you open up both a v3 and a v4 from the
top, leaving the rest assembled, you will notice that there is actually a difference inside, once you've got the various moving parts in place.
as you no doubt know (again, this is addressed more generally), all three-part window-bearing kayfun tanks (at least all the various clone ones i have) consist of two identical metal pieces and then the inner plastic bit that is very slightly different from the other two. It's not just that it's made of plastic. What is interesting, and potentially relevant, is that they are actually not the same thickness. Again, this is just from all of my various kayfun tanks, but the inner plastic window portion is actually thicker than the metal top and bottom rings. it's not a big difference, but there is a slight inner bulge along the entire internal length of your tank where the plastic window is.
before i go any further here, i'm going to define two terms that i use when mentally thinking about this. one is the place where this bulge of the plastic window ends, transitioning from the narrow confines of the window back to the comparatively roomy interior of the metal rings. let's call this the start of the "upper chamber". the second term is for the place where the chimney that screws down over the build deck narrows down to the chimney stem. I call this the "chimney shelf". ignore as you see fit for your own purposes, but i'll be using them in this writeup hereafter.
now, on the v3, upper chamber opens rather low on the overall height of the device, since the two metal rings are so short. consequently, when you assemble the device, the chimney shelf actually exists within the upper chamber. in contrast, the v4 has much longer metal tank rings, and so the upper chamber actually opens up much higher than it does on the v3. so high, in fact, that the chimney shelf occurs within the plastic bulge, very nearly level with the transition in fact. Because of this very small detail, the fluid dynamics within the tank itself are actually dramatically different.
I have neither the patience nor the immediate ability to generate the equations or simulations necessary to prove it, but my gut tells me that having the chimney shelf and the upper chamber flare at the same level results in a pressure differential that is steeper than that which occurs in the v3. that pressure difference, i think, means that the exact same liquids in the exact same bottles flow through the tanks more smoothly in the v3 than in the v4.
i could be one hundred percent wrong on the reason, and i could even be basically wrong on the existence of a significant mechanical difference. my sample size is 3, which is hardly academically valid
. but i am very sure of my experiences heretofore, and i maintain that, while i absolutely adore my v4s and breathe so much more easily with all that capacity, the v3 is
definitely easier to fill quickly and smoothly from the fill port, given identical vg-heavy juices.
now, anyone with a stronger physics and engineering background can feel free to rip me a new one.
i'm
REALLY off to bed this time. (jeesh)
Lol) and so far so good. No dry hits and no leaks, thanks again brotha!
Lol) and so far so good. No dry hits and no leaks, thanks again brotha!
