I've been meaning to clean my M7 cold air intake (I assume very similar to Alta)

My local auto parts dealer was shocked and confused when I described what I was looking for. All they had was a K&N branded cleaning kit. But I know the K&N filters do not have the same construction as the foam filters we have. Would the cleaner and oil in the K&N kit work for me?

If it helps the cleaner is:
Sodium metasilicate pentahydrate (cas. No. 6834-92-0)

Oil is:
Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated heavy paraffinic (cas no. 64742-54-7), 1-decene, homopolymer, hydrogenated (cas no. 68037-01-4), C.I. Solvent red 164 (cas no. 71819-51-7)

I've seen some cleaners on our mini tuning sites, I don't think things like that ship to Canada very nicely though.

Thanks in advance.

 

Honestly, I use my K&N kit on both my Mini Cooper and my Raptor 700 (foam filters) and didn't had issues. It's probably better to use a kit made for foam filters, but from my experience, I don't see any problems with it.

 

Go to a motorcycle shop/snow machine aka snowmobile shop(they should have foam cleaning/oiling kits)..get a kit to clean foam filters...
A K&N cleaning kit can/will destroy a foam filter....also the oil is different...not the same stickiness....

 

if your tight on a budget you can use simple green to clean, but youll need foam filter oil which can be had cheap at a cycle shop like suggested but at least it saves you some money

 

Thats funny! I just used the k&n kit to clean my uni filter two days ago. Seemed to work fine. the cleaner worked well and it was washed off in 1o minutes. I used a good amount of the oil on the two pieces of the filter. Sorry to hear the oil is a different. I'll keep an eye on it and re-clean it if necessary..

 

UNI makes a good filter cleaner and oil. can find it onlilne or any motorcycle shop. if you have a little extra money buy another filter and have it clean and oiled when your filter on the car needs to be cleaned. You can always have a clean and oiled filter ready with no down time. Then you can clean the dirty filter when you have time and it will be ready for the next time.

 

Thanks, everybody.

my local suzuki shop had Bel Ray foam filter oil. nobody here had anything from UNI, but I suspect what I got will be at the very least closer to what I need than K&N.

 

Bel Ray will work also

 

thank you for the help

 

heck like anything else you can use what you want, but after a few applications of using the wrong cleaning kit dont be surprised to find the foam begining to deteriorate and fall apart.

Considering what you can potentially suck into your supercharger splines from a compromised foam filter, one would have to ask themselves two quesions...

1- why do they make air filter cleaning kits with specific applications for foam and K&N style.

2 - do you feel lucky ?

 

Mercifully, I asked myself those questions ad nauseum. And absolutely, I'd rather feel safe than lucky and day.