Has anyone noticed rust buildup inside of their Tempest 2? I just received mine last week cleaned it in my ultrasonic cleaner and with ipa and used it once. Today I noticed that there is rust inside of the mouthpiece. How can I remove it and how can I avoid the rust buildup? Or is this a manufacturing issue?
So, anecdotally, I also had a rust issue. I’ll preface by saying I did buy second hand, as I was not lucky enough to get into the pre-order. As a result, I cannot wholly attest to handling before it got to me, only my experience after and the word of the prior owner.
I had noticed small rust/pitting on the interior of the titanium sleeve and corresponding location on the exterior of the airflow tube. Confirmed it was all Titanium, because likewise, I thought myself crazy as Ti does not rust. The usual cleaning did not remove it, which to me confirmed it had somehow rusted.
I took some high grit sandpaper and took my sweet time removing what I could, got it basically taken care of (inside the sleeve was tough to get leverage, but I think it’s adequate and I can probably only notice it because I spent so long removing it).
As its titanium, it made sense that perhaps original owner cleaned it with something else which may have transferred rust over and somehow it took footing, but now I do wonder if this may be related to the manufacturing process, specifically as others have mentioned a previous material being worked leaving fine particles which may have embedded/transferred to some units and resulted in some (extremely rare) rusting issues.