How to Maintain Your Vape Gear Like a Pro: Step by Step Guide

Are you the type of person who can’t resist what’s new and shiny? Do you feel compelled to buy a new vape kit every couple of months, or are you more the kind of person who buys vaping devices hoping that they’ll last for a while? If you’ve owned a decent collection of vaping devices over the years, you know that they can vary greatly in their longevity.

Just like other types of consumer electronic devices, a vaping device can last for several years, or it can stop working without warning. Part of that variability is simply the nature of electronics; they’re very complex and have many possible points of failure. How you maintain your vape gear, however, will also affect its longevity. When you are cleaning your vaping device, replacing your coils or swapping your batteries, it’s possible to make some serious mistakes that can ultimately make your vaping equipment fail before its time.

If you want your vape gear to last as long as it can, you need to maintain it correctly. Here’s how to maintain your vape gear like a pro.

How to Maintain Your Vape Mod or Vape Pen

For the most part, there isn’t a lot that you need to do to maintain the main body of your vaping device. If you need to remove dirt, dust or fingerprints, you can do that with a soft cloth. If your device has ridges that tend to collect dust, you can clean those areas with a toothpick.

While maintaining a vaping device is relatively easy, there are a few ways in which you can really mess things up if you’re not careful. Because a vaping device is electronic, it should never be wet. Don’t clean your vape mod or vape pen with water. Don’t use solvents for cleaning, as those can damage the device’s finish.

Leaking e-liquid is the most common reason why vape mods die before their time. The threading at the top of your device isn’t completely waterproof, so if you have a tank that leaks – or you use an RDA and tend to over-drip – the e-liquid may contaminate the device’s internal components by seeping through the threading.

Your best defence against leaking is preventing it from happening in the first place. If you have a leaky tank, replace it. If you have an RDA, drip carefully. If a tank does leak, though, quick action on your part can help to prevent the e-liquid from damaging your mod. Use cotton swabs to remove the e-liquid caught in your device’s threading. Simply insert a cotton swab into the threading and spin it around while pushing down gently. Repeat the process until a swab comes out clean.

How to Maintain Your Vape Tank

Since a vape tank has no electronic components that can fail, there’s no reason why you can’t continue using the same tank virtually forever as long as the coils for that tank are still being produced. Proper maintenance, however, is an important part of ensuring that your tanks last as long as they can.

When you disassemble your tank, check its internal silicone gaskets for warping, stretching or tearing. When a vape tank leaks, the most common reason is because the gaskets are damaged or misaligned. That’s why a new vape tank always includes a set of replacement gaskets – so you can replace the damaged ones easily.

The most important thing to know about maintaining a vape tank is that the tank’s threading is very thin and is machined according to tight tolerances. When you reassemble a tank after cleaning the tank or replacing the coil, be careful to avoid crossing the threads. If the tank’s components don’t screw together easily, don’t force them; back them up and try again. Damaged threads will cause a vape tank to leak, and there’s no way to fix them.

How to Maintain Your Vape Batteries

The most common reason why vaping devices stop working is because their batteries fail. If that happens to a device with a permanent internal battery, the device is effectively dead. Even if your device has removable batteries, though, it’s still in your best interest to maintain those batteries properly because high-quality batteries aren’t cheap.

If your device has an internal battery, you should only charge the battery by connecting it to your computer’s USB port. You might be tempted to use the wall adapter for your tablet or mobile phone, since it uses a higher current that can charge your device more quickly. The problem with charging a vaping device with a mobile device charger, though, is that it subjects the device’s battery to higher-than-normal heat. The excess heat can cause the battery to die before its time.

If you have a vaping device with removable batteries and use an external battery charger, you should always examine your batteries before returning them to your device after charging. If a battery is warped or bulging or has any other sign of physical damage, stop using that battery. Remember that batteries for dual-battery vaping devices should always be charged and used in pairs; if one battery in a pair is damaged, you need to replace both batteries.

How to Prevent Your E-Liquid From Spoiling

One of the great things about e-liquid is that it doesn’t really spoil in the way that food can spoil because propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine both inhibit microbial growth. An e-liquid can, however, degrade in flavour due to long-term exposure to air or sunlight. The nicotine itself can also degrade over time, causing an e-liquid that’s been in storage for a long time to have slightly less nicotine than an e-liquid that was just purchased.

In general, you can expect a bottle of e-liquid to last about a year before you’ll begin to notice a change in flavour.

To keep your e-liquid in peak condition, store it in a cool, dark place to minimize exposure to heat and sunlight. To minimize exposure to air, don’t open a bottle of e-liquid until you’re ready to use it.