8 Common Vape Problems and How to Fix Them Fast

• Nearly every fault comes back to three things: a flat battery, a spent coil, or liquid in a place it should not be. Check those before you assume the kit is dead.
• Coils are consumables, not spares. Most last one to two weeks. A burnt or muted taste is the coil telling you its time is up, and a fresh one from the replacement coils range usually solves three problems at once.
• Leaks and gurgling are almost always filling errors. Overfilling, liquid down the central airflow tube and a loose seal cause the lot. Our guides on stopping device leaks and filling a pod kit correctly cover the technique.
• Match the liquid to the coil. Thin 50/50 in a big sub-ohm coil weeps out of the airflow; thick 70/30 in a small pod coil burns dry. Ratio, not brand, is what matters.
• Replace the kit only when the battery is the problem. Short runtime, a port that will not hold a cable or a device that gets hot doing nothing are the three faults no amount of cleaning fixes.

Why vapes go wrong in the first place

When a vape stops behaving, the instinct is to assume the device has failed. In our experience it usually has not. The vast majority of faults we get asked about come from improper use, skipped maintenance or mismatched parts, and all three are things you can put right at the kitchen table.

A vape is a simple machine. A battery sends power to a coil, the coil heats liquid held in a cotton wick, and air is pulled through a channel to carry the vapour to you. Every fault on this page is one of those four elements being out of step with the others. Once you can spot which element is at fault, the fix is usually obvious and usually cheap.

It also helps to know what is normal. A coil dulls gradually rather than dying overnight. A pod that has been refilled a dozen times will seep a little around the mouthpiece. A device that has been in a warm car will be thin and leaky for an hour afterwards. None of that is a malfunction. If you are new to refillables, our roundup of common vaping mistakes beginners make covers the habits that cause most of it.

Find your fault fast

Start here. Find the symptom, check the likely cause, then read the section below for the detail.

1 and 2. No vapour, and leaks from the pod or tank

No vapour at all is the complaint we hear most, and it is frightening for about thirty seconds. Work through it in order. Charge the device fully on a cable you know works. If the light comes on but nothing happens when you draw, take the pod or tank off, wipe the contacts on the base with a dry tissue, and push it firmly back on. A pod that is a millimetre proud of its seat will not fire. If the device has a button, check it is switched on: five clicks is the standard way to turn a kit on and off. If it has an adjustable wattage, check it has not been knocked down to its lowest setting in a pocket.

If it still does nothing, fit a new coil. A coil that has burnt through its wire will read as an open circuit and the device will refuse to fire rather than damage itself. That is protection working, not a fault. Keeping a spare pack of replacement coils in the drawer turns this from a lost evening into a two minute job.

Leaks are the second most common and by far the most annoying. The first place to look is the seals and O-rings, because a perished or displaced seal is the number one reason a pod weeps. Take the pod apart as far as it goes, dry every surface, check the rubber rings are seated in their grooves and not twisted, then reassemble. Do not overtighten a tank: crushing the O-ring deforms it and makes the leak worse next time.

The second cause is overfilling. Every pod and tank has a fill line, and the space above it is not wasted room, it is the air pocket that holds the liquid in place. Fill past it and the pod has nowhere to breathe, so it pushes liquid out through the airflow. The third cause is liquid that is too thin for the coil. A watery 50/50 in a large mesh coil will simply run through the wick. We have a full walkthrough in how to stop e-liquid device leaks, and the technique that prevents most of them is in how to fill a pod kit correctly.

3 and 4. Burnt taste and weak flavour

A burnt taste ruins a session instantly and it is the one fault you cannot undo. It happens when the coil fires against cotton that has no liquid in it, and once cotton is scorched it stays scorched. The usual causes are a brand new coil fired before it had chance to soak, chain vaping faster than the wick can refill, or a coil that has simply reached the end of its life.

Priming a new coil properly is the single highest value habit in vaping. It takes five to ten minutes and is the best thing you can do to make a coil last.

1. 1
   Wet the cotton by hand. Drip liquid directly onto every cotton port you can see on the side of the coil, and one or two drops down the centre. You want the cotton to darken, not to flood.
2. 2
   Fit the coil and fill to the line. Seat it firmly, fill the pod or tank, and close it. Do not go past the fill marking.
3. 3
   Leave it five to ten minutes. Set it down and walk away. Thicker high VG liquid needs the longer end of that; thin 50/50 needs less. This is the step people skip and then wonder why coil three of five tastes of ash.
4. 4
   Take three or four dry puffs, then start low. Draw with the device switched off to pull liquid through, then vape at the bottom of the coil’s wattage range for the first tank and work up.
5. 5
   Pause between puffs. Give the wick a few seconds to refill. Back to back hits are the fastest way to dry-burn a coil that was perfectly healthy a minute earlier.

Weak or muted flavour is the same problem earlier in its life. A coil that is on the way out loses the top notes first, so a liquid you loved last week tastes flat and slightly sweet-and-nothing-else. Before you change it, try two free fixes: close the airflow ring a little, because too much air dilutes flavour, and check the liquid is not simply old. Oxidised liquid darkens and dulls, which we cover in e-liquid shelf life and storage tips.

The other cause is you, not the kit. Vaping the same flavour all day blunts your palate within a fortnight. Keeping a second bottle from the 10ml e-liquid range to alternate with usually brings the flavour back without touching the hardware. If you are unsure whether your draw style suits the coil you are running, our guide to MTL and DTL inhalation styles explains which coil resistance belongs with which draw. Leaks and burnt taste often travel together, so if you are chasing both at once start with the filling guide before you spend money.

5. The battery will not charge

A device that refuses to charge feels terminal and usually is not. Start with the cable, because cables fail far more often than devices do. Try a different lead and a different plug or USB port. A lot of “dead” kits are a frayed cable that only works at one angle.

If a known-good cable does nothing, look into the charging port with a torch. Pocket lint compacts into the back of a USB-C socket and stops the connector seating fully. Switch the device off, and use a wooden cocktail stick or the tip of a dry toothbrush to lift the debris out. Never use anything metal and never use water or alcohol in the port.

Charge from a normal low output plug or a computer port rather than a fast charger. Vape batteries are small and rapid chargers meant for phones and laptops can push more current than the internal board expects, which shortens battery life over time. If the device charges but empties in an hour or two when it used to last a day, the cell itself is worn. That is the one fault on this page that is not worth repairing, and it is the point to look at a new pod kit.

If you are replacing a kit that has been failing for a while, something like the Vaporesso Xros 5 Mini is the safe default: a 1500mAh battery, refillable pods and widely stocked coils, so nothing about it is hard to keep running. Battery: 1500mAh, USB-C. Pod: 2ml refillable. Coil: 0.6Ω Xros Corex mesh fitted, with other Xros pods available. Strength: any 10ml up to 20mg/ml.

6 and 7. Gurgling and overheating

Gurgling is the sound of liquid where air should be, almost always in the central airflow tube or flooded into the coil head. It usually follows overfilling, leaving the device on its side, or a big pressure change such as a flight or a hot car. It is a nuisance rather than a fault and it clears in seconds.

Take the pod or tank off, hold a folded tissue over the base and blow firmly through the mouthpiece. That pushes the pooled liquid out rather than into your mouth. Wipe the contacts dry, refit, and take two gentle draws before a normal one. To stop it recurring, store the device upright at room temperature, fill to the line and no further, and do not leave a full pod lying flat overnight. Again, the technique in the pod filling guide prevents most of it, and a pod that gurgles and seeps together is a leak, so treat it with the leak fixes above.

Overheating comes from prolonged use or a wattage set higher than the coil is rated for. Every coil has a range printed on it, and running at the top of that range continuously will get the device warm no matter how good it is. Put it down for ten minutes, drop the wattage by five to ten watts if your kit lets you set it, and check nothing is blocking the airflow slots, because a device starved of air heats up fast.

Mismatched parts are the other cause. A coil that is not the exact model the tank was designed for can sit slightly off, make a poor connection and run hotter than it should. If the device gets hot while doing nothing at all, or the battery casing feels warm on charge, stop using it and replace it. That is the one heat symptom that is not a settings problem.

8. Leaks that will not go away

If you have reseated the seals, filled to the line and fitted a fresh coil and the pod still weeps, go back to fundamentals. Inspect the pod body against a light for hairline cracks, which are common around the coil socket on a pod that has been pulled apart many times. Check the tank threads are not cross-threaded or stripped. A pod is a consumable too, and past roughly a month of daily refills it is doing well.

Then check the liquid. Persistent leaking in a sub-ohm coil usually means the liquid is too thin for it, and persistent dry hits in a coil of 0.8Ω and above mean the opposite: the liquid is too thick to wick. If you are unsure which bottle belongs in which kit, shortfill vs 10ml e-liquid explains the two formats, our longfill guide covers the concentrate route, and how long a 100ml lasts will tell you whether the bottle you are on is past its best.

Finally, consider whether refilling is right for you at all. If you leak liquid every time you fill and you would rather not learn the knack, a prefilled system removes the step entirely. Sealed prefilled pods click in and out with nothing to spill, and the coil is replaced automatically with each pod. It is the simplest way to own a vape, and prefilled pod kits and big-puff refillables are the legal replacements now that disposables are off sale in the UK.

For anything with a tank rather than a pod, the seals are larger and easier to inspect, and replacement glass and O-rings are cheap. Browse the vape tanks range if the tank itself has had enough, or a full starter kit if you want the whole thing matched from the box.

The 60 second check before you give up

Run this list before you buy anything. It resolves most of what comes through our inbox.

• Is the battery fully charged, on a cable you have tested?
• Is the coil clean, correctly seated and less than two weeks old?
• Are all the parts firmly attached, with no cross-threading and no twisted O-rings?
• Is the liquid the right ratio for the coil, and is it still within its best before?
• Is the airflow set somewhere sensible, and are the slots clear of pocket fluff?

Keeping a spare pack of coils and a spare pod on hand turns nearly all of this into a two minute job. Coils such as the Vaporesso GTX V2 five pack or the Uwell Caliburn G2 replacement coils four pack are the sort of thing worth adding to any order so you are never stuck with a burnt one. And if the liquid is the weak link rather than the hardware, the full e-liquid range is the place to start again.

Coils, pods and kits that keep working

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