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Dunking the air filter

I use a K&N cleaning kit and after the filter is dry I spray on the pink oil. No need to over spay it, just follow directions.
 
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The gauze in the K&N filters is cotton, so you need a cotton safe cleaner. You can't go wrong with the K&N brand. On the cheap, I have had success with a spray cleaner such as Simple Green or Fantastic. It needs to be something designed to cut grease and oil. Saturate, let stand 5 or so minuts, then rinse in as hot of water as you can. Don't use compressed air to clean it, you can blow holes in the cotton gauze. Let it air dry, then reoil. K&N oil comes in spray or a squeeze tube, it has a pink/red dye in it so you only need to apply enough to saturate the cotton to an even color of red/pink.
 
Perhaps a dumb question, but since Van's FWF instructions don't say anything about oiling the NEW filter, is this something that needs to be done?
 
Buy a spare filter.

When you are ready to clean, just install your spare pre-oiled filter. You can then clean your filter with appropriate cleaner (water soluable) and it will be dry and ready to oil the next time you do a filter change out. Rotating them like this makes it quick and easy and you dont need to wait for the filter to dry out.
 
JonJay said:
When you are ready to clean, just install your spare pre-oiled filter. You can then clean your filter with appropriate cleaner (water soluable) and it will be dry and ready to oil the next time you do a filter change out. Rotating them like this makes it quick and easy and you dont need to wait for the filter to dry out.
Click to expand...

I've enjoyed great success using this procedure for the K&N filter in my truck, recommend it to everyone, and will do the same when my aircraft is complete!
 
I was a bit overzealous when oiling...

...the cleaned filter in my O-360 carb'd engine. I did not realize it at the time, but I used too much of the K&N oil on the cleaned filter. The red oil dripped out of the aft FAB drip hole and put drops of the red fluid on different parts of the engine mount and nose wheel. I spent a lot of time looking for what I thought was a brake fluid leak. I could never figure out where the red fluid was coming from, only that it was on the aft side of the air box and lower portions of the engine mount.

At this point I had 2+ hours on the engine since the filter cleaning procedure, and for some reason I opened up the airbox for a look see. There was considerable air filter oil between the rubber seals of the filter and the fiberglass of the air box. I removed the filter, used an air hose to blow out the "excess" red oil, put it all back together, and now, no more red oil drips.
 
Don't put a bunch of oil on the filter, go as little as possible. THe more oil, the filter will restrict. On my 912uls I put to much oil on the filters and ended up with fouled plugs right off. I had to clean the filters again and the next time put only one drop of oil on each plete. So my advice, very little oil. I also have two filters, that way I can clean one and keep flying. Usually change them out at the 50hr oil change.
 
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