Vivi Novas. I’m pretty sure at this point you’re kind of tired of hearing me talk about these things. It’s not my fault, the e-cigarette industry seems to be in love with this style of tank. At least the Splitfire Tank does something a little different with the design. Think of the Splitfire like it was in one of those magic acts where they saw someone in half. That’s the general idea of this variation. Read the Splitfire Tank review to see if it’s a good product or all smoke and mirrors.
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Product name | SplitFire Tank System |
| Available from | VaporAlley | |
| Price | $10.99 | |
| Threading | 510 | |
| Capacity | Approx. 3ml | |
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Splitfire Tank Design
As the name of the tank implies and the introduction gave away, the Splitfire is a two-piece tank system similar to the ever-popular Vivi Nova. Like that tank, this one features replaceable heads available in a variety of resistances.
Unlike the more conventional version, the Splitfire’s tank is divided in two pieces. There’s actually several pieces involved here. The tank is indeed two pieces, and there’s a top cap and a bottom cap with a stem. In between the two sits a center piece, sort of like the middle bun in a Big Mac.
That middle plate is what connects the two halves together, the bottom of the plate is held into place when the head is screwed into the stem, while the top part of the plate has threads for the top tank to screw into. This minimizes the amount of plastic threads holding everything together which is a good thing.
Filling can be a little challenging with this design. There’s two ways to approach filling. The first is to unscrew the top part at the middle plate, leaving the top of the bottom section open. Just pour the liquid in. But, the problem there is you have to make sure to leave enough space to compensate for the displacement of the wicks when you put the top cap back on.
Too much liquid, and you’ll find yourself wiping down your Splitfire Tank. It’s also slightly tricky getting the wicks in and screwing everything back together.
Alternately, you can use a syringe with a blunt tip needle (or a bottle with a needle tip). This method is far easier. Just take the top cap off and stick the needle between a wick and one of the holes leading to the bottom chamber and fill. The downside is not everyone has needles handy.
The head itself is similar to a Nova head, albeit slightly smaller. It also lacks the top silicone gasket featured in the original models. At first I thought this was an omission, but it turns out it’s a fairly clever bit of design.
Without a gasket, there is an air gap between the drip tip and the head. This allows condensation to simply fall back into the top tank rather than collecting in the tip and eventually winding up in your mouth. Because the liquid is secured in the lower tank, there’s minimal risk of liquid flooding out the tip.
The liquid is mostly kept in the bottom tank by the 4 wicks coming from the head. Each wick goes into a hole below. There is some gap between the wick and the sides of the holes, but liquid mostly stays put.
Using the Splitfire Tank
I have to say the Splitfire’s design is virtually free of the occasional gurgles and leaks that happens with Vivi style tanks. Some liquid does get past the wicks and into the top section, but it’s never been enough to actually leak out the tip.
In fact, when filling a brand new tank, it’s important to put some liquid in that top section to make sure the wicks and coil are wet. It seems to take a while for the liquid to travel up the wicks.
As you might imagine, this can translate into some wicking problems.
The tank isn’t terrible at wicking, it’s just not as responsive as the single-piece tank systems. This translates into a device that isn’t great for chain vapers since you’ll have to wait a minute between puffs, or invert the tank for a few seconds. Alternately, lowering the voltage might help as well.
When the coil is properly wet, the Splitfire produces a nice vapor. It’s plentiful, though a touch cooler, probably due to it forming in the chamber before going up the mouthpiece.
Most interestingly, flavor reproduction is very good with this tank. I’ll attribute it to the lack of a top gasket as well.
I did find “fluffing” the wicks helped a bit with liquid uptake. Simply unbraid the wicks from the bottom and give them a little slack on the top side of the plate by the coil. This way they aren’t pulled so tight against the sides of the head minimizing flow restriction.
Whatever you do, don’t pull the wicks out from the plate before fluffing. You’ll have a heck of a time getting the wicks back through the holes. Trust me on that one.
The nice thing about the replacement heads is the wicks have plastic tips to make threading a new head easy. Just remember to cut off the extra plastic once you have it threaded.
Even with fluffing, performance still isn’t what I’d call stellar. I consider the following outside the scope of the review, but it made a night and day difference in my experience with the Splitfire.
What I did was replace the stock silica wicks with cotton. I mentioned this procedure in my Slim Nova review and put out a YouTube video detailing the procedure.
The process isn’t very hard, although you have to cut the material thinner and double it before inserting it into the coil to get the 4 wicks you need to go through each hole.
When I was done with the procedure, I was blown away by the results. By far, this was the most vapor I’ve gotten from the simple wick replacement modification on any tank. It took the Split fire from a tank which I was fairly unimpressed with to one of my current favorites.
Factories need to start shipping these things with better wicks.
Too Long; Didn’t Read
The Splitfire Tank is a design very similar to the Vivi Nova, with the exception of having an upper and lower tank. The design eliminates leaking and gurgling, but wicking suffers as a result. A reasonably simple modification improves things a great deal if you like to tinker. You can grab one of these tanks at VaporAlley.
Pros
| No gurgling |
| Accepts regular drip tips |
| Good flavor |
| Fantastic performance if modified |
Cons
| Mediocre performance with stock wicks |
| Less than elegant filling |
| Fairly low capacity |
| Hard to thread wicks on old heads |
Disclosure: I received this product for review from VaporAlley, this review features affiliate links.
