Foam air filter disintegrating, clogging carb, alternatives?

I know on my dirt bikes I'm replacing foam filters every 2-3 years now. In the old days (I grew up riding in the 80's) they lasted a lot longer. I don't remember ever replacing a foam filter in the 80/90's, just lots of cleaning and oiling... Something has changed either with the filter material, or the oil. I dunno, but they sure disintegrate quicker than they used to.

tealboy wrote:

Lynnmor wrote:
Could you just buy foam air filter material and cut your own?

I like this idea and ordered one, cancelled the yamaha oem filter I had on order, in part, bc the custom one will arrive sooner but also bc the quality of the oem is sub par from my experience

Great! I have foam filters that are 30 years old working well and some that needed replaced in just a few years. My opinion is that the quality of the foam varies greatly by manufacturer.

Just replace the foam filter every few years. The oil breaks down the rubber foam...
Almost any foam rubber will work. You can run it with no filter but then risk getting big particles in the carb or the cylinder which is bad.
You could rig up a paper filter or rig up a bigger filter box attached to the air intake, but much easier to just replace the foam every few years.
You need to be starting the generator more often than yearly just to let it run.
Also, you want to run 100% pure gas in it, not any ethanol which breaks down, contains H2O and will harm the carb if it sits for any amoutn of time, though running on ethanol mix will be fine as long as you store it with 100% gas having been run enough to get the carb to contain 100% gas.

**edit. Neighbor gave me his chainsaw and I cut 12 trees... Finally got tired of carb being out of adjustment, so took cover off to work on it and no filter at all. Yes, motor will run without filter (might cause the carb to be out of adj since it no longer has to pull air as hard through the filter) but you do not want that junk in the carb, or any scratchy materials to make it into the cylinder and scratch the piston...**

Lynnmor wrote:
Could you just buy foam air filter material and cut your own?

I like this idea and ordered one, cancelled the yamaha oem filter I had on order, in part, bc the custom one will arrive sooner but also bc the quality of the oem is sub par from my experience

One issue with oiled foam filters is that they clog quickly, especially in dusty conditions. You may have to rinse out and re-oil often !

tealboy wrote:
I have an older yamaha ef2800i generator that I keep in storage for power outages and a couple years ago, it ran very poorly. I discovered the foam filter disintegrated and tiny particularly fed into the carb. Big mess.

Decided the filter was very old, original, so hard to fault it. I ordered a new oem foam filter and now, 2 years later, it has done the same thing.



Any ideas?

Order a new filter and leave it in the package in the house until you need it.

They bake and turn brittle in the heat.

Put it in storage with a new dry filter and change to genuine KN filter oil.

Could you just buy foam air filter material and cut your own?

jjrbus wrote:
Trying to remember which of my engines have a foam filter? Honda 2000, no disintegration of foam filter, one of my power garden tools has a foam filter, can't remember which one, also no disintegration of filter.

I have quit buying many things off Ebay, filters would be one. Poor quality issues and rumors of counterfeit items.

True, but the first one that disintegrated in the same manner came with the yam gen when brand new. It is a characteristic of the foam filter yamaha uses. I just ordered another oem foam filter mostly bc I don’t see any alternatives.

Trying to remember which of my engines have a foam filter? Honda 2000, no disintegration of foam filter, one of my power garden tools has a foam filter, can't remember which one, also no disintegration of filter.

I have quit buying many things off Ebay, filters would be one. Poor quality issues and rumors of counterfeit items.