Which carbs?

[Paddy]

Actually paper filters and flows much better than foam, thats why all the car manufacturers chasing every MPG they can use paper, even Ferrari and Aston Martin. Foam is better for Dusty and Desert condition simply because its washable. and you are collecting bigger particles, I have never met a good foam pod filter on a bike, its purely thats often all there is room for.
Back in the day when i was more into this we found you could barely get 10k miles on a 900SS Ducati with open bellmouths before it wanted a re-bore and the carbs rebuilt, A Darmah ( same engine) would often do 50k miles with its std air filter boxes and paper filters with no loss of power..

 

[Vince]

It's important with oiled foam to have them completely saturated in proper filter oil, don't half-arse it. Use an old Ice Creem container and dunk the filter in after you wash the crap out of it and air dry it completely, filter oil is much stickier than most other oil. It's a horrible job but much less horrible or expensive that a fully dusted engine top end. Without oil, you might as well have open bell mouths as oil does the work. But you must squeeze as much oil out as physically possible or you will lose performance a lot, I am talking eye-popping squeezing, Not wringing as that tares them, no washing in Petrol either, soapy water. I liked the water-soluble filter oil as it was easier to clean the filter till I drowned a bike in a creek once and washed all the oil out mid-ride. Went back to the non-water soluble type after that. Not good when you're riding around old coal mines, with lots of tailings on the assess tracks. You have never seen proper dust till you try that once. BTW this goes for Ram filters used on Mikunis as well, they sell cleaning and oiling kits for them. You might be surprised at how much crap comes out when cleaning those, guess how I know.

 

[helicopterjim]

Actually paper filters and flows much better than foam, thats why all the car manufacturers chasing every MPG they can use paper, even Ferrari and Aston Martin. Foam is better for Dusty and Desert condition simply because its washable. and you are collecting bigger particles, I have never met a good foam pod filter on a bike, its purely thats often all there is room for.
Back in the day when i was more into this we found you could barely get 10k miles on a 900SS Ducati with open bellmouths before it wanted a re-bore and the carbs rebuilt, A Darmah ( same engine) would often do 50k miles with its std air filter boxes and paper filters with no loss of power..

Only drawback to paper is they do flow less in high humidity ........ but it is temporary.

Jim

 

[Alzero]

K&N sell a cleaning kit, but it is essentially Formula 409 spray cleaner. The 12 cylinder Detroits in our boat had a pair on the twin turbos on each engine that I cleaned at every other oil change: 200 hours run time for the filters.

I kept a gallon jug of 409 and a disposable foil pan to dip them in and soaked them overnight. Then rinsed and soaked until they were clean. These were probably the biggest ones they made, at least a foot long and maybe 6” across at the inlet. I used a hand spray bottle to oil them from another gallon of filter oil and let them drain in a pan before reinstallation.

The 409 got the brown filters white again and the oil made them red so it was easy to do a visual check of condition. The air coming into the engine room was also filtered through HVAC filter material, but there is a surprising amount of dust out on the water.

BTW, an oil change was just over 20 gallons total in five gallon pails with a gallon or so in each pair of oil filters. Straight 40wt low ash oil made for two stroke diesel engines and sold by NAPA. In the three years we lived and traveled aboard I did 11 of them myself. The hard part was finding a place to dispose of the old black oil!