• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

A simple air box mod that works

I don’t think you guys understand the design of this intake.

This bike is not like a dirt bike where the filter is inside the air box and filters the air between the air box to the engine.

This design filters the air into the air box and the engine pulls from that supposedly clean air in the air box.

This seal is "downstream" from the filter or on the supposedly clean/filtered side.
Anything that gets past it, gets to the engine.
This seal is an integral part of the clean air box chamber.

I can tell you that I found a conga line of sand gains under the seal going up to break point gap.
The engine is pulling unfiltered air through that gap.
It gets under the seal at the corners; there is a pretty decent size path from the outside to the inside when that seal is broken.
More than just dust is getting by.

If you ride in sand that area around the filter access door is being peppered by sand and it’s getting in.

Now I am worried about the intergrity of the Item #21.
If this simple seal is breaking, what about that one.

 
Did item #3 break/rip or did it just come apart at the glued seam.

Really this whole air intake system IMO is the Achilles Heel of this bike. :banghead:
 
Edit...Yup it's a length of gasket material.
I did glue it together to make a good seal with the filter holder.

20130724_193647_zps66592f48.jpg
 
As I said, mine has the same gap in it. It was not ripped or torn. The edges don't fit together. I'm guessing that even though the parts picture shows a complete gasket, the OEM is just using a length of material cut from a long spool and simply not making the length quite right, leaving a gap when installed. I would not be surprised if you get a brand new gasket in the form of a length of gasket 'wire' and not a pre-formed piece. I could be wrong, but that's my bet.
 
I just looked at mine. The gasket has a seam and no gap. I don't believe it was ever a single loop. Also, my air box was clean although there was lots of dust residue on my filter around the edges. I have noticed many differences between my Strada and my buddies Strada. His is from the first assembly and mine from the second.
 
I ordered the UNI green filter today. When I get back from vacation next week I'll post some pics of my solutions for this problematic airbox.
 
hasenpfeffer said:
Actually, I do not believe this gap would be on the intake side. The sealing surface of the filter makes it so that anything around the filter is unfiltered. This gap allows air to flow into the cavity that the filter sits in, not the intake cavity. It is a small, pinch gap, so only very dusty conditions would likely be any type of problem. Simply put RTV or weather stripping or anything to fill in the gap. Heck, maybe remove the gasket altogether and put a small bead of RTV in the groove and let dry before reassembling.
Click to expand...
Fair enough
 
hasenpfeffer said:
Actually, I do not believe this gap would be on the intake side. The sealing surface of the filter makes it so that anything around the filter is unfiltered. This gap allows air to flow into the cavity that the filter sits in, not the intake cavity. It is a small, pinch gap, so only very dusty conditions would likely be any type of problem. Simply put RTV or weather stripping or anything to fill in the gap. Heck, maybe remove the gasket altogether and put a small bead of RTV in the groove and let dry before reassembling.
Click to expand...
PP
 
hasenpfeffer said:
Actually, I do not believe this gap would be on the intake side. The sealing surface of the filter makes it so that anything around the filter is unfiltered. This gap allows air to flow into the cavity that the filter sits in, not the intake cavity. It is a small, pinch gap, so only very dusty conditions would likely be any type of problem. Simply put RTV or weather stripping or anything to fill in the gap. Heck, maybe remove the gasket altogether and put a small bead of RTV in the groove and let dry before reassembling.
Click to expand...
Actually, if you look at ogre's pics, the gap is on the intake side and before the filter.
 
No, its after the fliter.
It is in the clean air side of the box.

I updated the diagram a bit.
Black is dirty, blue is clean
 
Navelgazer said:
Actually, if you look at ogre's pics, the gap is on the intake side and before the filter.
Click to expand...

The confusing thing is that even though the gap is "before" the filter's sealing surface in orientation, it is not in the intake cavity, but in the unfiltered clean air cavity around the filter. Look at it some more. It's a weird setup and easily confusing.

EDIT: I'm seeing that my terminology is confusing, sorry. I'm meaning the correct thing, but is clearly not a very good way to say it. When I say "unfiltered air cavity", I do mean the air cavity that's downstream of the air filter. In my head this meant the air that will no longer go through a filter, or unfiltered. Ogre's term "clean air" is clearer.
 
Sorry, but the cavity around the filter is susposed to be clean air, it’s on the filtered side.
The unfiltered side is to the left of the filter when looking into the box.
On the other side of the hole that the filter presses against.

It’s a horrible design that has lots of possibilities for gaps.

This space should be clean.
IMG_20130721_103818_168_zps7975bfee.jpg
 
Just checked mine out. I have the same gap in the gasket. Just slack workmanship. Easily plugged though. Oh, a trap for young players- when I took the filter setup out, I dropped a screw and after finally finding it I reinstalled it. It seemed to be winding in too far but didn't feel tight and when I had a look the screw had pulled through the housing. WTF?

I pulled it apart again and realised the washer was missing off the screw. Luckily when I reinstalled it with the washer there was still enough meat left for it to hold. I should have known better, but it didn't take much pressure to pull through, that's for sure.
image.jpg
 
hasenpfeffer said:
The confusing thing is that even though the gap is "before" the filter's sealing surface in orientation, it is not in the intake cavity, but in the unfiltered air cavity around the filter. Look at it some more. It's a weird setup and easily confusing.
Click to expand...
Yes
Yes Hasenpfeffer, you are correct, but the execution of this whole airbox design is amateurish to say the least, and with having to drop the motor to check valve clearances, I'm starting to lose the love.
 
Ogre_fl said:
Sorry, but the cavity around the filter is susposed to be clean air, it’s on the filtered side.
The unfiltered side is to the left of the filter when looking into the box.
On the other side of the hole that the filter presses against.

It’s a horrible design that has lots of possibilities for gaps.

This space should be clean.
IMG_20130721_103818_168_zps7975bfee.jpg
Click to expand...
Hi Ogre, I took my dirty filter to Unifilter to see if they would produce a foam job for these but said for them to get the required area of filter medium there is not enough space available. without being rude suggested that a Briggs & Stratton would be happy with our filter. Suggested that I leave the bike with him for a day and may be able to come up with something ie, main filter or snorkel pre-filter. I hope to make time to do this soon.
 
Navelgazer said:
Hi Ogre, I took my dirty filter to Unifilter to see if they would produce a foam job for these but said for them to get the required area of filter medium there is not enough space available. without being rude suggested that a Briggs & Stratton would be happy with our filter. Suggested that I leave the bike with him for a day and may be able to come up with something ie, main filter or snorkel pre-filter. I hope to make time to do this soon.
Click to expand...

Bummer, I was hoping that the BMW G650X uni-filter might work in our bikes.
I have been trying to find the dimensions.
I know its a lot shorter and fatter than the G650GS version.
But if Uni themselves is saying they cant even make a custom one to work, it probably wont fit.
UNIFILTER_BMW_G6_4ba1c72c4dd74.png
 
Navelgazer said:
Yes
Yes Hasenpfeffer, you are correct, but the execution of this whole airbox design is amateurish to say the least, and with having to drop the motor to check valve clearances, I'm starting to lose the love.
Click to expand...
When I work on my TR650 I too loose the love, but get the love right back after getting on it to ride the bike.

Every time I look at this thread it reminds me to get a flexible screwdriver with a 1/4" square head on the end so I can get to some of these awkwardly placed screws/bolts. I put one on my shopping list now...
 
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