Saturday 6 August 2011

DIY airfilter

Was at M@TD's house today, and we made a DIY airfilter for his Skorpion. Genuine MZ filters are in the region of £18, but ours cost less than £1.50. Read on:
We'd both bought some filter material being sold by Ramair on Ebay. The packet contains two sheets of double layer filter material, enough for 8 Skorpion filters, for only £10.





These were being sold on Ebay as '2x RAMAIR Air Filter Foam Large Scooter Motorcycle Quad' as clearance, so if you want some, buy sooner rather than later. I'd made a DIY filter for my own bike so here's a Blue Peter style 'here's one I made earlier' picture, along with a used standard filter.

(Excuse dirty fingermarks!)

First thing to do is to cut the old paper filter material from the frame using a modelling knife.
Remove old filter material and tidy up any rough edges.




Carefully measure aperture in frame and cut piece from filter material to suit.




This is just me marking the foam. When cutting, use a steel ruler or other straight edge to get a nice clean cut.

You can see that you'll be able to get four filters from each sheet of material.



Trim any loose bits with scissors, then place the piece of filter material into the frame.



I would place the filter with the denser foam next to the mesh (towards the engine, downwards in this picture) This means that any bigger 'lumps' are caught by the coarser outer foam,leaving the finer, inner foam clear to catch any finer bits.
Once in place, it's time to warm up the hot glue gun.





Once warm, carefully glue the material to the frame with a fine bead of glue.





Et voila! As our French cousins would say. And that's the job finished.


Fit to bike and give it a test run. If (and it's a very unlikely if), the bike needs rejetted, then that's something you'll have to work out for yourself. Frankly, I seriously doubt you'll need to do it unless you ride flat out all of the time.
When it comes time to replace the filter, use a heatgun to melt the glue and pull the old filter out.

It should be possible to do this using any available filter material. Using a car K&N filter has been covered on my website, but I would imagine a piece cut from any suitable car or bike airfilter would do. I've even heard of someone using a green 'Scotchbrite' pot scourer, but that's not something I would personally advise!
I'll report back after I've done some distance on my Skorpion, and if anyone else does it, please let us know.

Disclaimer: Done at own risk...blah, blah........don't blame me if your bike blows up......blah, blah.......knives are sharp, so don't cut your fingers.......blah, blah.......glue guns are hot so you could burn yourself.....blah, blah.........

  


8 comments:

  1. Were missing you on the forum. How are you by the way, Norman?

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  2. 'Were missing me on the forum?' Does that mean you're not missing me now? Or did you mean we're? ha! ha!
    After a number of personal crises I'm getting back together again and hoping to get out and about more on the bike. In many ways, this blog and my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001554396563&sk=info have replaced the forum, and they're less likely to be hijacked by someone with a political agenda.
    Hope things are going well and you're having fun on your bike.

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  3. I used a glue gun because I've got one. The glue only holds the filter element in place and stops air leaking past it. You could use silicon gasket or even bath sealant equally as well.
    I hadn't intended on cleaning dirty filters as it would cost as much (or even more), to clean one as replace it.The Ramair cleaning kit costs the same as 8 filters: http://www.edsmotorsport.co.uk/ramair-filter-cleaner-207-p.asp

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  4. Thanks for the post Norman, and I like the idea of using the hot glue. Think when I get back to work I'll size up the air filter out of one of the Honda quads, which are foam type, I'll let you know the out come as it could be another source of the filter material. As for cleaning foam filters I use a tin of brake cleaner, usually Holts, and could if carefull clean three filters per can.

    kawa

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  5. Really great idea, Norman! I also think that replacing the air filters is a smarter move to make than cleaning the dirty one. At least with the new one, we can be sure that it’s on full capacity at protecting our engine. Ain’t that right?

    Enoch Ross

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  6. Glad you like it. I see the filters are still on sale on Ebay - 2 sheets (= 8 filters) for under 10 pounds. At that price you've got no excuse for having a dirty filter!

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