Discontinued The Grasshopper

[Gramin]

Oven clean didn't fix my cop lights, still getting random hits though, just have to click on and off 10 or so times to get solid blue.

Maybe some of the gunk got through and is blocking the sensor.

 

[vapviking]

Sorry to hear @biohacker had this weird experience of dirty Hoppers. It happened to @moondog too as I recall. C'mon HL, there are hygiene issues with this shit.

When I've sent Hoppers in they have come back cleaner than when I mailed them. Last time I included a pretty weak GHB1 that I had marked with little dots near one end with a Sharpie. The dots were only about 10% visible when Hopper came back, they must have wiped the battery down with something, if only minimally.

 

[voodoo_vape]

ohhh boy.. the GH has definitely come to change our lives.. even as in vaping experience or as in worrying about your unit's health or her absence when to the doc and so on....
This morning while I was having my day's 1st bowl, I got the straight to blue light. I kept on cleaning the threads with some blue-tac, changed the battery, fiddled a bit with the dial.. nothing.. straight to blue and not heat, nothing... Then I thought on reading here but before doing that, I opened my 2nd RMA.. I got my new body 19th Jan.. It's almost a month and a half... After opening my request, I got here, where I'd left the topic on the 628th page or sth... after some reading, @Gramin post comes up.. I must say dude, I'd never open the bottom screen for no reason.. Given my situation though, I did open it with a needle to pull it up. ..
This is what my bottom part looks like...

I dry-q-tipped it a bit, got some "dirt" out and that was it.. I put back the screen..... and it's back again....!!! Shall I start believe in miracles??
Something worth mentioning is that now my "ticking" has gone a lot lower.. I can barely listen to it and I'll have to put it next to my ear for it.. before that, the ticking could be heard easily even by holding the unit close to your chest.. I'm not sure if this was the problem or if it's a diabolic coincidence and my issue is only fixed temporarily.. Now, I'll have to tell Caroline to hold my request open for couple of days and then just close it if everything is ok..
As it looks like, the oven part is definitely something that the customer should be aware of and why not including a small tool for cleaning it as @Baron23 said earlier..
Why on earth the surface looks like "burnt" anyway?

edit: May I dare saying that my Purple Ti now works even better than before? It seems that the bottom's part little things do affect the performance a lot.. The hits had become much softer in a way lately to a point that I thought I was getting used to my stain and it's not medicating me enough anymore.. now I had another bowl and all of a sudden I'm feeling much more vaked off my tits once again and vapor production is much faster now as well.. will be keeping you posted about it..
I'm feeling so happy right now.. @Gramin thanks again so much for this post dude!! Luv'ya!!

 

[vapviking]

ohhh boy.. the GH has definitely come to change our lives.. even as in vaping experience or as in worrying about your unit's health or her absence when to the doc and so on....
This morning while I was having my day's 1st bowl, I got the straight to blue light. I kept on cleaning the threads with some blue-tac, changed the battery, fiddled a bit with the dial.. nothing.. straight to blue and not heat, nothing... Then I thought on reading here but before doing that, I opened my 2nd RMA.. I got my new body 19th Jan.. It's almost a month and a half... After opening my request, I got here, where I'd left the topic on the 628th page or sth... after some reading, @Gramin post comes up.. I must say dude, I'd never open the bottom screen for no reason.. Given my situation though, I did open it with a needle to pull it up. ..
This is what my bottom part looks like...

I dry-q-tipped it a bit, got some "dirt" out and that was it.. I put back the screen..... and it's back again....!!! Shall I start believe in miracles??
Something worth mentioning is that now my "ticking" has gone a lot lower.. I can barely listen to it and I'll have to put it next to my ear for it.. before that, the ticking could be heard easily even by holding the unit close to your chest.. I'm not sure if this was the problem or if it's a diabolic coincidence and my issue is only fixed temporarily.. Now, I'll have to tell Caroline to hold my request open for couple of days and then just close it if everything is ok..
As it looks like, the oven part is definitely something that the customer should be aware of and why not including a small tool for cleaning it as @Baron23 said earlier..
Why on earth the surface looks like "burnt" anyway?

edit: May I dare saying that my Purple Ti now works even better than before? It seems that the bottom's part little things do affect the performance a lot.. The hits had become much softer in a way lately to a point that I thought I was getting used to my stain and it's not medicating me enough anymore.. now I had another bowl and all of a sudden I'm feeling much more vaked off my tits once again and vapor production is much faster now as well.. will be keeping you posted about it..
I'm feeling so happy right now.. @Gramin thanks again so much for this post dude!! Luv'ya!!

Thanks for the pic. After some dirt came out, did it still look dirty, like in photo?
You can leave the rma request open for a while, no need to keep HL up-to-the-minute. I began one when Hopper did straight to blue. Every other day it would work then go back to the blue stare. After two weeks and other Hopper back from service (and working just awesome), I finally mailed the quirky one, but added a note in the dialog offering my concerns about restricted draw and weaker vapor...

 

[lazylathe]

So my week old Hopper was giving me issues last night... And different issues to what others are having!!

First bowl was perfect, 5 seconds to blue and thick delicious vapor!
Unload and dry clean the oven with a q-tip.
I then left the Hopper for about 20 minutes.

Next bowl went straight to RED FLASHING???
To me that means a flat battery??? And it was fresh off the charger with only ONE bowl so far.
Click off and on again, cop lights and then auto off!! WTF!!!
Next click on off it went to flashing red again...
Next click on off and straight to BLUE, no heat!!!
Next click on off and 2 seconds to BLUE and some vapor and then it stopped, herb was still green!

Disassembled the Hopper and cleaned it again and swapped out the battery to test.
Straight to flashing red...

Decided i had had enough of this vape for a while and placed it back on the charger with the 1st battery.

Came back a few hours later and it seems to be back to working again, for how long though...
Hoping it has sorted itself out but these things tend to always go downhill after the errors start.

If they can sort out the reliability issues of this vape, they will have a masterpiece of design innovation!

 

[voodoo_vape]

Thanks for the pic. After some dirt came out, did it still look dirty, like in photo?
You can leave the rma request open for a while, no need to keep HL up-to-the-minute. I began one when Hopper did straight to blue. Every other day it would work then go back to the blue stare. After two weeks and other Hopper back from service (and working just awesome), I finally mailed the quirky one, but added a note in the dialog offering my concerns about restricted draw and weaker vapor...

It's like you were reading my mind man.. I was about to tell HL about it and thought, heck.. why letting them know that I cleaned the bottom part.. let's see what they have to say.. Thanks for clarifying this

Regarding the dirt, I didn't push it really hard with the q-tipping.. few rounds and some xtra sweeping and that was it.. it did look like that, dirty kinda I must say.. I was wondering about the same thing.. why doesn't it look nicer and cleaner in a way.. how did it go to that state, will it go any further than that? and things like that arise now.. I'll see how it goes and hopefully we've found a major "fault tweak" solution to some sensor issues.. it's weird though, because the amount of dirt and stuff that I got out of it was not that great..

Something else that I've noticed when with a water tool.. If you have the GH naked and you touch your tooth on the tool's mouthpiece, you'll be able to sense the ticking through the glass..!!!

So my week old Hopper was giving me issues last night... And different issues to what others are having!!

First bowl was perfect, 5 seconds to blue and thick delicious vapor!
Unload and dry clean the oven with a q-tip.
I then left the Hopper for about 20 minutes.

Next bowl went straight to RED FLASHING???
To me that means a flat battery??? And it was fresh off the charger with only ONE bowl so far.
Click off and on again, cop lights and then auto off!! WTF!!!
Next click on off it went to flashing red again...
Next click on off and straight to BLUE, no heat!!!
Next click on off and 2 seconds to BLUE and some vapor and then it stopped, herb was still green!

Disassembled the Hopper and cleaned it again and swapped out the battery to test.
Straight to flashing red...

Decided i had had enough of this vape for a while and placed it back on the charger with the 1st battery.

Came back a few hours later and it seems to be back to working again, for how long though...
Hoping it has sorted itself out but these things tend to always go downhill after the errors start.

If they can sort out the reliability issues of this vape, they will have a masterpiece of design innovation!

When saying cleaning the oven and disassembling do you mean the under the oven part as well or just until the screen? Really weird stuff that's for sure... is it the one with the dial stuck on T5 as well?
So now it's working normally again? No flashing, no straight blue, nothing?

edit: @lazylathe I thought it was @biohacker unit with the T5 "stuck on" ... I keep on getting confused with your so alike avatars!!

 

[voodoo_vape]

my apologies..merged

 

[lazylathe]

When saying cleaning the oven and disassembling do you mean the under the oven part as well or just until the screen? Really weird stuff that's for sure... is it the one with the dial stuck on T5 as well?
So now it's working normally again? No flashing, no straight blue, nothing?

edit: @lazylathe I thought it was @biohacker unit with the T5 "stuck on" ... I keep on getting confused with your so alike avatars!!

Just regular cleaning, all done with the chamber facing down.
I have not removed the internal body screen

LOL!!! I am usually around 4 to 4.5 as i find the extraction to be pretty similar to 5.

 

[voodoo_vape]

Just regular cleaning, all done with the chamber facing down.
I have not removed the internal body screen

LOL!!! I am usually around 4 to 4.5 as i find the extraction to be pretty similar to 5.

Totally agree with you! I end it somewhere there as well.. Plus the fact that T5 can get you coughing much easier than below it.
Well, I think that if you get to a non-go state with your gh, worth trying internal cleaning as well.. instead of shipping it out again... Removing the screen isn't as hard as it may look like. Do it with a needle though by "grabbing" the screen from one of its holes and gently pulling it out.
@Gramin If I may ask, the 3 "stands" that the screen has, are they meant to go inside the actual metal or they're standing like that on top of the oven? Does any else know that? I think that if I push it more, I may damage the screen or something similar. It works fine like that so I'll leave it like that...

 

[natural farmer]

I feel really good not having bought a Hopper yet...

They still have to take care of a few things before they get my money!

Those employees that leave debris in the oven after servicing them and testing them? They should be re-trained. And vape less so they don't mix parts. If they do it intentionally they should say this to the customer. And certainly not replacing faulty parts with used ones. Even refurbished. I don't want a refurbished part on my brand new Hopper! If you want to reuse refurbished parts, build a whole vape out of them and sell them with a good discount to poor people like me!!!

That gunk that is gathering under the oven screen and brings all kind of trouble? I wonder what someone could find under the second screen that you can't remove... Actually I don't wonder. More gunk for sure. I think the whole heater should be removable so it can be cleaned after a few months of use as the position of that sensor is not likely to change soon! It will keep causing trouble.

The fresh air coming through the back end and around the battery? I still can't believe you guys don't have a problem with it. Isolated airpaths should be a standard with all vapes!

These are my biggest concerns right now.

Oh, and we already know what is causing the gunk up, don't we? Inverted Hoppers on a glass piece? Where do you think the little hot vapor that always remains in the bowl goes to? Yeap, rising up and condensing under the oven screen and under the second screen and on the heater probably. Add some herb dust that certainly finds its way under there as well and you have a great recipe for trouble! And with the heat retention this beast has, I doubt most of us REALLY clean a hit...

With all that said, I really hope they up their game and I find myself with a Hopper eventually! Not yet though...

Cheers all!

 

[slcbdco]

Hey, Molten... have you vaped other herbs with the hopper? I've been considering that, just looking for some hearing about anyone's experiences with that... ...

I use all kinds of herbs as tobaco. The grasshopper doesn't get flavor stained. However i usually use my Davinci IQ or pax2 for my herb blend as it does have tobaco in it and tobaco effect for me is to strong out of the grasshopper.

 

[Vapor_Eyes]

I've been thinking it's time to stop being so superstitious and start using my stock chargers for the Grasshopper. I haven't even tried either of them out once.

It seems like now would be as good a time as any. I have had to send a charger back both times I sent my hopper in for service. They're supposed to check everything, so theoretically I should have nothing to worry about, both of my chargers should be officially certified by Hopper Labs.

I have the old janky chargers though, not the new hotness. For people with both, are the new ones worth an upgrade or should I save my money? I'll try the old ones first but I might upgrade. It would also be a nice bonus to be able to use the @Ratchett charging dock.

 

[Baron23]

I personally think Haze has done a VERY smart thing by making the heater coil accessible and replaceable on the Haze 3 (yeah, its not out yet so there is much yet to see....but at least they get it).

I don't see anyway for the GH heater to not need to be accessed at some point for cleaning, but alas its not accessible.

Some really terrific innovations in the GH, but some oversights or awkwardness in the design also.

Mine is still running great but is NOT a daily driver and is pretty much babied by me.

Cheers

 

[abcd5432]

Just regular cleaning, all done with the chamber facing down.
I have not removed the internal body screen

LOL!!! I am usually around 4 to 4.5 as i find the extraction to be pretty similar to 5.

Ya I'm surprised people aren't cleaning their vapes more often. The first thing I do when I notice a decline in performance is clean my vaporizer. You shouldn't wait that long. Set a calendar reminder or something.

 

[biohacker]

Do it with a needle though by "grabbing" the screen from one of its holes and gently pulling it out.

How? How can you get the needle in enough and get a good grip to get it out? And how did you get it back in? This is something I may consider for my cop lights ss gh, however it apparently can void your warranty so i'm a little apprehensive.

Oh, and we already know what is causing the gunk up, don't we? Inverted Hoppers on a glass piece?

Oh, perfect!

With all that said, I really hope they up their game and I find myself with a Hopper eventually! Not yet though...

I'm starting to think I should have waited..... i'm finding the batteries to be a pain in the ass, as they effect performance so much. @lazylathe i've experienced the red flashing recently and isolated it to the new GHB2 batteries. Completely random it seems.

 

[voodoo_vape]

How? How can you get the needle in enough and get a good grip to get it out? And how did you get it back in? This is something I may consider for my cop lights ss gh, however it apparently can void your warranty so i'm a little apprehensive.

The needle as soon as its put inside the hole and then the screen is being pulled while pushing the needle towards the opposite direction so that it holds resistance to the pull, will have enough power and grip to pull the screen out. Then I put the screen gently back in the mouthpiece pushing it down with a screw driver until I felt that there is no more to go inside.

Well, by just pulling and putting back the screen, as long as you don't mess up with the screen itself I don't see the reason that you would void your warranty or even if they will understand that it's been open. In any case though, this area should have been accessible to the customer with specific instructions. Especially, if it is an area that can cause such trouble.

edit: I was reading the manual again.. it's a fact that it actually says not attempting to fix and damaged or faulty unit.. On the other hand though, the manual also says for IPA, that Caroline has been pointing out to apply only dry cleaning.. With such lose consistency, it would too much of them cancelling a warranty for just pulling out the screen. If you mess up in the actual oven, that's something else that it'll be able to be noted I guess.

 

[slcbdco]

I have the old janky chargers though, not the new hotness. For people with both, are the new ones worth an upgrade or should I save my money? I'll try the old ones first but I might upgrade. It would also be a nice bonus to be able to use the @Ratchett charging dock.

The @Ratchett dock is the best reason to upgrade chargers. I actually like the OG connection better so I have one in my car and another in my office.

Some really terrific innovations in the GH, but some oversights or awkwardness in the design also.

That is the beauty of the lifetime warranty, as they upgrade and redesign parts, if you have a part failure you get the upgraded part.

At the early part of pre-launch .... which hey I think we're in "launch" right? I think 3-5 day delivery means we're now post pre-sale, happy day two pp. AND MARDI GRAS!

Sorry for that birdy digression, the result of coffee, grasshopper and durban, and you think reading it is bad, I gotta live in this head!

Speaking of living, as I do, down the street from HL, part of the reason they require you to send your unit back for RMA now is a. early on when there were a lot of revisions, a few too many savvy folks figured it out and would send back units that were definitely not broken but conveniently identified the "new" part (which i'm sure my birdheadness and big mouth were not unrelated to that) and b. they also now sometimes replace archaic parts on a unit that is in for an unrelated issue. Sometimes they don't catch it and sometimes the new version for that part isn't in stock but the actual "problem" is so they move forward.

Their concept behind lifetime warranty is not that your current unit will last forever or even 10 years. Instead it's that as the unit fails regardless if it was original design or regular use fatigue that in 10 years your grasshopper will STILL be a cutting edge device because the components have also improved over time.

It's another reason I compare GHL to BMW, BMW has been building the exact same straight 6 cylinder motor since the late 70's, it's simply been refined over time. As my "friend" says to me, the only difference between the BMW I drive and a new one is that a new one has the rich person on the inside.

 

[Vapor_Eyes]

The @Ratchett dock is the best reason to upgrade chargers. I actually like the OG connection better so I have one in my car and another in my office.

Thanks for the response! In that case I definitely won't get two of them to replace my old ones. I might get one to use with the dock though.

 

[natural farmer]

edit: I was reading the manual again.. it's a fact that it actually says not attempting to fix and damaged or faulty unit.. On the other hand though, the manual also says for IPA, that Caroline has been pointing out to apply only dry cleaning.. With such lose consistency, it would too much of them cancelling a warranty for just pulling out the screen. If you mess up in the actual oven, that's something else that it'll be able to be noted I guess.

Although I do remember them recommending dipping the body up to the holes in ISO to clean the oven... In a tall shot glass if I am not mistaken. Maybe this cleaning takes care of all the debris under the oven screens?

That is the beauty of the lifetime warranty, as they upgrade and redesign parts, if you have a part failure you get the upgraded part.

But at what expense for the customer's mental health? I don't wanna play this game with any vape anymore...

 

[JCat]

Although I do remember them recommending dipping the body up to the holes in ISO to clean the oven... In a tall shot glass if I am not mistaken. Maybe this cleaning takes care of all the debris under the oven screens?

Wow! Really? That would be awesome if that was a procedure we could follow ... one of the things that concerns me the most about this vape is the ability to maintain it ... something that is very important to me with my vapes ...

 

[Baron23]

That is the beauty of the lifetime warranty, as they upgrade and redesign parts, if you have a part failure you get the upgraded part.

Only as long as they are in business, mate. And design and reliability issues have killed companies before.

One of my real objections to the GH is the overlapping, different, and confusing failure/issue symptoms coupled with Hopper sending a bunch of units back to the owners with no fault found.

A VERY long time ago I worked on a mathematical/software implemented model intended to identify areas of ambiguity in self-test, test points, and failure indications. If, for example, by taking a reading at Test Point A, it is not possible to tell if the failed module is Module 1, 2 or 3, then these modules are in an ambiguity group and the design is insufficient in that it cannot discriminate the actual failure.

Sure seems we get a LOT of that with the GH.

Since you know these guys, ask they what the heck their expectations are for owners to keep the area beneath the initial oven screen clean. I don't care how small the screen holes are, with enough usage stuff is going to get in there. What was their plan for this...just another RMA? Personally, I think that screen should be removable by the owner without voiding warranty and that they should post instructions on how to do this in their manual.

All - I bet a dental pick would work well. I have a very cheap set and it comes with straight as well as small dog leg shaped very sharp picks. But the warranty implications worry me about doing this at all.

Cheers

 

[lazylathe]

Hopper seems to be back to working like normal again!! For now...

What i did this morning was to use the GH at temp 5 with an EMPTY chamber for about 4 or 5 heat cycles and draw through it as hard as i could for as long as i could.
The first two times i opened up the front end and there was nothing inside.
Third time there was some find black dust caught on the lip of the body. Wiped it out with a clean q-tip.
repeated 2 more times and both times the front end was clean.

Could this black stuff be from under the screen? Hopefully!

I have never used my GH inverted, always upright in a WT so hopefully it should not be too gunked up under the screen.

I will keep using the hopper as i have been and will update if anything of interest happens!

No cop lights, flashing red or auto shut off issues have been experienced since yesterday!

EDIT:
Three bowls and no issues! All just like day 1 again!
I ended the session with an empty chamber on 5 drawing hard, nice and clean.
Back on the charger for later!

 

[slcbdco]

I ended the session with an empty chamber on 5 drawing hard, nice and clean.

I've started to make a habit of this, its not unlike when I used to blow out my bowl after dumping it out. I actually notice that there is less and less vapor on those empty hits after doing it fairly regularly for a few weeks so I think I'm getting to the bottom of it.

 

[Gramin]

Gave my Hopper a run on 5 though my air pump with the mouth piece on. Managed to suck a heap of really dark oil that formed all around in a ring on the opening. I managed to scrap it off for later

Super clean Hopper ready to be sent back for RMA today or tomorrow. It looks as new as the day it arrived a month ago lol.

Hopper 2# is out for delivery today and my ears are perking every time I hear a potential delivery van outside

 

[biohacker]

Sweet so for my cop lights HL is just making me send in the body only, not everything. Just a FYI that's all.

And no WPA by the end of Feb. as promised? Shocking!