Cleaned my K&N air filter

Well after nearly 6 years and 17K, I decided I better look at my air filter. Again using JeffR's pictorial it went well! Time consuming but no problems. I think Honda hates us as to air filter location!  At least this one is MUCH easier than on my old Goldwing GL1800, ugh.

The filter was dirty but not clogged, I ran a clean paper towel in the air box and picked up NO dirt so the K&N did its job well. Picture below shows the filter cleaned and ready to reinstall.

For those of you that want to chunter and natter about only using OEM filters, two things to remember. 1. My son got this one for me and 2. Don't believe all the horror stories on the internet. I run K&N in ALL my vehicles, what YOU choose to use is your business.

Looks nice and clean.

K&N filter material works very well oil traps and holds a lot of dirt. I've used one before on FJR.
Most who complain about them didn't install them properly or never serviced them. There are so many different types and some need a lite coat of grease on ends to seal properly.

SW airbox has O-rings in housing that seal it pretty good and intake is up high under panel.

SW air filter replacement is a 15 minute job the second time around. Don't break any tabs. Don't ask?

Reading this topic reminds me that that in my early years on maxi scooter forums the 'drilled airbox and K&N filter' mod used to be popular, with all sorts of outlandish claims about enhanced performance and mpg. It now seems to have fallen out of fashion, maybe it was a complete waste of time.

I can honestly say that air filters are something I've never concerned myself with, I don't live in a dry and dusty climate, or have the slightest inclination to go off road.

Anyway my interest is now piqued, so I'm going to have to visually look at the air filter housing on my Forza for the very first time and read up on what the Owners Manual says about the air filter. .

Normally I would have about as much interest in it as I would about the one on the car, but we're on lockdown and doing all sorts of strange things to pass the time.

I've just renewed my annual Forza insurance and by shopping around and being an ex-squaddie I got it for not much more than £40 Fully Comprehensive. I started a rye flour sourdough starter soon after lockdown and I'm enjoying baking sourdough bread again. I'm also psyching myself up for when I give myself a DIY haircut sometime this weekend. 

I agree, Meldrew. Some weird things happening at the moment. I never drilled the airbox (did that when I was younger on other bikes and saw no appreciable diff). Honda designs the box for maximum efficiency, I think. They just like to hide the filters LOL My feeling has always been that engineers that design this stuff should have to repair or replace what they make.

The biggest advantage to the K&N is that they don't need service for much greater intervals. Kind of like extended intervals on synthetic oil. This was a HUGE blessing on the aforementioned Goldwing 1800. That one took 3 of us 2 hours to service! Absolutely a horrible design. Granted I was able to do the Silver Wing much faster this time, but it isn't like either of my cars, open a couple of clips on the airbox then remove the filter. 5 minutes or less.

With Hondas in the past I bought/used K & N filters-----they fit/worked and I just left them in for the 50,000 miles I was planning to keep bike---But Suzuki Burgman 400's---they did not fit just right.

I never do/did things to enhance performance, just found cheaper in long run to buy something more powerful.

I'm another happy/ignorant user of K&N filters. Mainly I like them because I am a DIY kind of guy and like to over-maintain my bikes, and I'm quite happy to be extracting and cleaning a filter every 10,000km or so. The Swing filter doesn't seem so hard to access, just the rear side panel to remove then the airbox screws.

I've only experienced a performance gain once with a K&N on my Suzuki RF900, but I made that change at the same time as installing a Supertrapp muffler so who can say? Certainly that combination woke the bike up big time compared to stock. I had K&N filters on my VFR800 and VTR1000 but can't say I noticed any benefits in those, in fact many VTR owners reckon the K&N has adverse airbox effects on those bikes with their ticklish giant carburetors.