The Air Filter Fiasco

Don't you know that whenever I dismantle parts on a bike, they tend to part company with me? Take my right front fairing for example...

Plastic welding might not be enough

Yep, that shows a broken mount from the top rear fastener. *sigh*  I'm going to have to learn how to plastic weld if this keeps up, and I expect it will.

So in order to access the air filter that is so conveniently located underneath the gas tank, you have to first take off the windshield, then the two left and right front fairings, the left and right body strips, unscrew the tank itself, disconnect the fuel line, fuel gauge, a breather hose, loosen two over flow hoses, and a Phillips screw before you can pull out the plastic and stainless steel mesh frame that houses the foam element air filter.

Yeah, I've quite a few kilometres on this filter. 

This is what it looks like post prior to oiling it

The easy part is cleaning and oiling it. Zip loc bags come in handy at this point, and as I had no mineral spirits I used Coleman camp stove fuel. It reminds me of Badger NFLD where I cleaned the filter for my KLR in my friends Aunts driveway using the contents of my stove.

The operator's manual calls for regular motor oil to be used on the filter... DON'T DO IT!!! Read the notes at the bottom of this page first!

Okay, let me get back to putting this puppy back together...

Cheers!

I've used some rubber washers to help reduce fairing buzz

Can you believe three hours to clean and oil an air filter?! It's back together and I took the opportunity to rubber mount the fairings using some sheet rubber and a leather belt punch. Each fastener now has 1/8" rubber stand off from the bird cage. If I'm lucky that will end the 4500 rpm fairing buzz. 

Now that high idle at startup should be gone, and I'll get better gas mileage. Right? Maybe. Tune in again to see what damage I can do.

Update: I was riding it home after a hot day, and met up with my friend Jay on the 401 highway, who at a stop light in Ajax, pointed out an oil leak on my cylinder head. Doh! 

Thoughts of how much I could afford to put into a $1000+ repair began to make me feel sick, especially with a tour coming up this October to the Catskill mountains. 

I checked it at dusk, trying to determine the source of the leak in the confined space between the air box and the cylinder head and was unable to see the culprit in that low light. 

A further inspection found that the air box over flow pipe is located directly on top of the head, and excess oil from the foam filter had trickled it's way out onto the head. Bugger! That scared me, but what a relief to find it was not a disaster after all. In future I'll use a dedicated air filter oil such as Bel Ray Foam Filter Oil (Blue, thick and very tacky) I purchased a bottle in 2007 for my Kawasaki KLR 650 and still have it in the garage. One litre lasts forever, and you can use it for snowblowers and lawn mower filters too. 

Bel Ray Foam Filter Oil

Now I can focus on replacing that squared off and scalloped Conti Trail Attack2 front tire!