First time building an RDA, muted flavour on Mongrel.

[Courier5ive]

First time building an RDA as I had heard good things about the flavour compared to a regular tank (currently using the Zeus). Picked the mongrel as it looked easy to build, using Muji cotton pads and got a multipack of coilogy 3mm coils, so far tried the fused Clapton 0.34 and tri-core fused Clapton 0.21 both between 50 and 75W. I've watched 5 different reveiwers build deck, tried different amounts of cotton (currently using less is more and slight improvement but still not great), different heights for the coil and I've even tried the cotton included with the rda and I can't get any good flavour. I have the same juice in my zeus tank and it tastes so much better so I know something is wrong.
I'm getting lots of thick vapor, just hardly any flavour. Tried closing the airflow to halfway with a minor improvement but again still not great. The picture was taken after 5 builds and I caved and went back to the Zeus for a bit so the cotton had dried slightly.
Sorry for the long message, I'm a noob and really want to get into rebuildables but finding it really frustrating so far, any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Courier5ive]

Oh and I am heating the coils and scraping to get rid of hot spots until it glows evenly from the inside out, and then priming the wicks with a good bit of juice once they've been threaded. Currently using it on the pulse v2 squonk if that makes any difference.

 

[JohnnyAce]

One thing I can see there is, you've made it hard for yourself & installed the coil with legs over rather than under

Take the coil out & turn it over & install so the coil's "belly up", then straighten the coil up & it should give you a good coil placement

Mine's "legs under" & just laying flat

 

[Courier5ive]

Thank you for your suggestion, I will try it this afternoon. Do I need to keep it at the same height the one I have in is at or lower it?
The reviews I've watched seem to have the coil belly down like mine, does this affect flavour?
Also could you put a picture on here of your build with the coil belly up for a visual guide please?
Again I apologise for the 21 questions.

 

[Simon G]

First time building an RDA as I had heard good things about the flavour compared to a regular tank.

I don't really have any suggestions on the rest of it.... but I think this applies far less now than it might have done in the past. When I first started vaping you couldn't even compare the two, but that 'gap' (if it even exists now) is far smaller.

 

[JohnnyAce]

Thank you for your suggestion, I will try it this afternoon. Do I need to keep it at the same height the one I have in is at or lower it?
The reviews I've watched seem to have the coil belly down like mine, does this affect flavour?
Also could you put a picture on here of your build with the coil belly up for a visual guide please?
Again I apologise for the 21 questions.

Just been and snapped a pic, mine vapes absolutely fine so try that as a starting place then move the coil up if you fancy playing around with it

Damn Vape even show you to build it like that & have grooves either side of the deck for your coiling rod. Whoever you watched build it, I'd unsubscribe

 

[scrumpox]

i don't use the Zeus or the Mongrel. I did check out Daniel's review of the Mongrel to see what it's about. Daniel knows what he's about and rates the Mongrel for flavour.

My first thought was about the juice. You say you're getting clouds but not flavour. What's the VG/PG ratio you're using and could it be more suitable for the wicking of the Zeus rather than the Mongrel?

My second thought would be wicking. As you're a novice builder it could be that wicking is taking you more time to master than the installation of a coil (I don't see too much wrong there.) Wicking RDAs is straightforward you'd think, but clouds without vapour density suggests you've still got to get it right. That's par for the course. I'd abandon Muji if I were you, nothing works better at muting flavour, IMHO. I also notice that one wick tail is discolouring, which might be because it's picking up condensate, maybe just from the way you tilt the atty when vaping. It might also indicate that your wicking is not evenly balanced. That condensate will not do anything for flavour, only hasten the time to replace the wick and clean the coil.

Every rebuildable has it's idiosyncracies. Persistance pays off.

 

[Mr Ripple]

Turn it over as @JohnnyAce says.
The way you've got it means that there are only three wraps of the coil at the bottom to vaporise juice whereas if you turn it over you'll have five wraps.

 

[andipandi]

I'd abandon Muji if I were you, nothing works better at muting flavour, IMHO.

How so? I'm surprised at you saying that.

 

[scrumpox]

How so? I'm surprised at you saying that.

It tastes woolly, takes ages to break in compared with cleaner cottons. MTL vapers might notice it less, especially if they use nothing else, but with a bigger slug of cotton in a longer, larger ID coil it makes a difference. Again, IMHO