E3D Kraken clone clogging

So i've been modding my creality cr-10 with an aliexpres kraken hotend. Everithing on the printer seems to work, i've got the 4 extruders working, dimensional accuracy is really good on the prints, and i leveled the 4 nozzles using a dial indicator and everything seems square. The only thing missing is adding a dual Z axis because it leans on the unsupported side quite a bit. However, the hotend clogs constantly. I havent been able to print anything larger than a 20mm XYZ calibration cube. Sometimes it clogs 40 min into the print and sometimes as soon as it starts, despite extruding fine just seconds before when manually extruding trough octoprint. To my understanding the kraken and the chimera heat breaks are the same, and i've seen a few posts of people having problems with the chimera, but none of the solutions there worked. If i manually take out the filament when there is a clog it looks a bit thicker than normal. I've fount that cutting the thicker part, reinserting the filament, and then pushing hard with pliers makes gets the clog out, but other than that i cant seem to get it printing reliably. I'm using an azteeg X3 pro controller, 17HS8401 motors for the extruders and the stock creality ones for the movement. Also MK8 extruders with about 500mm of bowden tube. I also tried 2mm and 1mm retraction, and disabling it altogether, same results. Any help would be appreciated

It could be a lot of things.

What is almost certainly part of the problem is the extruder not feeding consistently into the hot end.

Especially if the hot end keeps moving around a pivot point.

This can also happen when z axis goes so far up - the extruder doesn't have as much pressure as when on a first layer.

One other thing to check - the actual consistency of your filament, ie deviation from its stated diameter. That can also mess things up totally.

Sorry to necropost, but it sounds like your cold-end cooling is not working (that's what causes the filament to expand above the extruder and not be able to be retracted through the Bowden tube; Bowden setups need more robust cooling than direct drive). The original E3D Kraken came with a watercooling setup, and I assume that the Chinese knock-offs also have it? Air cooling is insufficient when all four heads are hot.