Talley’s Picks: K&N Air Filters

OEM air filters are great, and of course are designed to preserve power and performance for the machine they’re manufactured to fit. But sometimes an aftermarket product like a K&N air filter will improve on and in some cases even outperform the original. 

K&N air filters are designed to increase performance by using fabric that provides a large filtration area, making them more durable, and reducing the frequency of maintenance required by other aftermarket air filters and OEM filters. Multi-layers of woven cotton gauze media offer superior filtration. K&N air filters fit directly into OEM airboxes with an application-specific sealing bead to ensure a perfect fit. They’re washable and reusable, pre-oiled, ready to use and made in the U.S.A. 

Here’s what Partzilla’s resident pro John Talley says about K&N air filters:

John Talley: I’m a fan of K&N. I like to be able to reuse my filters, because I ride in pretty dusty environments and that saves me a lot of cash. The K&N will actually filter out smaller particulates than the OEM. Well actually, giving you a little bit better flow and we proved that on the dyno with our little CBR 600 that we had a few years ago. And the K&N beat the other one by a horsepower or two. Was it earth-shattering? No. But a couple of horsepower on a 600cc bike was pretty substantial, especially one of as high performance as the CBR. Its biggest advantage is that when it gets dirty, you just go through the process to clean it back up and then reinstall it, so it’ll pay for itself very quickly. 

Partzilla carries K&N cleaning products to keep these high performance reusable air filters going for a long time. Watch the video above to see how to clean and oil K&N air filters.