Ebay air filter from China: A review.

Just a warning to anyone thinking of buying one of these $20 filters on Ebay.
They are complete garbage. It is flimsy, the metal backing is shoddy, overall just terrible.
They also shipped it in an envelope, so at some point b/w China and here it was smashed, and the one side of the paper element is smashed. The only thing this would be useful for is if you needed to run a filter while you gutted your OEM filter to glue in uni foam. I was going to gut the knock off, but the 14 year old OEM is still a better option.
So, buyer beware. There is no way anyone that cares about their bike could hold this truly POS filter in their hand and think putting it in their bike is a "good" idea. Oh, and buying this filter was an accident, I didn't realize it was coming from China until I checked the auction info after nothing came for a week. The seller also had 100% positive feedback, another mystery to this transaction.
I give the Chinese Ebay filter 1 Star, because it actually showed up and resembles a filter.

 

Well, that's an unfortunte lesson it seems, at least it was cheap.............

 

Thanks for the heads-up. Going to be doing some maintenance soon. Glad I'm aware of this.

 

Exactly what i'd expect from China, useless junk !!

I'm waiting for reports to start coming in about those "All Balls" Chinese 1/2 price junk bearings that got installed and failed at relatively low mileage.

 

EMGO air filters are pretty much identical to the OEM and are only around $25

Part # 12-91170 (6th Gen)

Rollin

 

From what I can tell from the photos of many of the cheap Chinese filters, they have a smaller filter area than the stock filter (as much as 20%-25% less filter area in some), so they won't flow anywhere near as well as the stock filter. Personally, even though I didn't like the price tag, I bought an OEM filter when I replaced mine recently. The way that I see it is: an OEM air filter costs me AU$100... A low km engine from a wrecker would cost AU$1000, and I'd have to install it (or pay someone to install it : $$$), plus the fees (etc) involved in informing "the authorities"... To me, even though $100 is expensive, it's also worth the peace of mind. Anyway, that's just my $0.02 worth...

 

pics or it didnt happen

 

I've resisted putting any more effort into this filter, but for you Ghost I will make an exception and get a pic of it later.

 

I guess the smashed part gives you extra HP.


Hard to tell in the picture but this metal backing is flimsy and secured with a few plastic rivets.

 

I can't remember the exact shape of the airbox off hand, is the poorly secured metal mesh on the bottom???

 

Yes and you can lift the metal backing and fit your hand behind it. Anything that would fly in and rip past the filter would make it past that metal backing at some point.

 

Wow, I am officially speachless at the utter stupididy of that design muchless the horrible condition it arrived in...:doh:

 

Looks like it was the type withe the same filter area as the OEM part. The metal grate is only there to stop the filter paper from pulling through/ripping out, but it sounds like it wouldn't do its job anyway... Sorry to hear that it's a POS...

 

Is that cheap POS filter a close copy of the OEM? I just replaced mine (it was pretty ugly as you can see and replaced with a K&N (which came in a proper box!!)

 

Yes it is a close copy minus the extra plastic extensions over the filter.
I picked up a roll of UNI foam off ebay, I'm going to make my own filter this winter out of the OEM.

 

Without starting a "everything from china is/is not junk" argument, I've actually had good luck with the all balls steerer needle bearings. I still stick with OEM for wheel bearings, always have and always will. But I had to use the all balls steerer bearings in a pinch on my 92 FZR1000 expecting the worst. Several thousand miles later, still smooth. And I have a set of those chinese Pazzo lever knock offs on all of my bikes. No issues whatsoever.

Sorry for the tangential thinking. back to the filter issue.... Luckily it was a cheap lesson learned. No name products are always a calculated risk I guess. Thanks for the heads up!