I noticed that the owners manual says not to use any oil in the foam air filters used in Arctic Cats. This goes against all my dirt bike upbringing. I just installed the the Part# 0436-177 prefilter on my 2001 300 4x4 and I can see why you would not want to oil it or the outer foam element, but I am still oiling the inner element, with air filter oil of course. The 2001 accessory brochure on page 22 list part # 0436-195 air filter oil. Whats up with that?[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

 

My understanding is that the inner element on the 300 is not foam, but rather paper/metal and that the outer prefilter is foam - therefore you would not want to oil paper - right??? Maybe that's on older 300's, but the ones we have at camp have a foam outer prefilter and the main filter is paper surrounded by metal. My 2003 AC filter is all foam and the manual states to oil it. I bought a spare and it came pre-oiled.

 

According to my 2001 Service Manual, You should remove the foam wrap from the air filter and wash it and the polyester filter in warm soapy water and either air dry, or blow dry with low pressure air. The warning says: "CAUTION Do Not put oil on either the filter or foam wrap". However the 400 and 500 says to use oil on the foam wrap on their filter. So go figure.

 

Yeah, I thought that was it...My filter is all foam, with a rubber housing and a spring coiled through the center. That being said, my buddy puts the spray oil, (sticky PLJ) on his 300 foam with no problems, just leaves the inner alone...

 

after 1200 miles my rings were shot on my 99 300. now i have a 2002 500 and it gets oiled all the time and has 2600 miles on it with no problems. my friend replaced rings in his 300 3 times already and is now putting oil on his filter regaurdless what the manual says and no problems yet.

 

Boy, I felt kind of stupid asking this question in the first place, but from all the response you guys have given me apparently there has been a lot of other people wondering the same thing. I have reread my 2001 operators manual and it says to oil the filter. I dosnt say anything about inner or outter eliments. (mine has a foam outter filter with a foam inner filter that is not removable from the hard rubber end caps surrounded by a wire mesh that the outter filter fits over). The accessory per filter part # 0436-177 is completly different. It slides over the complete filter assy. and is made of a real fine black nylon. It has very small holes in it and is a very baggy fit over the main filter. the instuctions that came with it say do not oil the foam filter. I think this is wrong. What I am going to do is oil the inner and outter foam filters and then carefully install the new nylon pre filter over them without getting any oil on it. The idea is that this pre filter not being oiled will let the dirt hit it and then fall off with out becomeing embedded in it and stoping the air flow. As long as I am still oiling the inner filters I think Im OK. Another thing I do on all my lawn mowers and small tractors to increse the dirt capacity of an air filter is to put heavy grease around the insides of the air cleaner lid and sides. The idea for this is to give the dirt somthing else to stick to before it even gets to the element.

 

The original filter was not the foam set up you have now. There is a metal mesh in the filter element on the original filter. My 2005 400 has the new style which is a foam filyter with a spring to maintain shape with the foam sleeve over it. You oil both of those. My original filter on my 2001 250 would be screwed up if is it oiled. I oil the after market replacement sleeve but not the filter itself.

 

Yeah, make sure you're running an aftermarket set up in your 300. My buddy used PLJ filter cleaner and oiled the inner filter and his 300 would not fire up at all. He took the filter out of the parts bike and only oiled the sleeve - fired right up....

 

Apparently there have been several type of filters used on different years and sizes of A/C and that is where the confusion begins. Thanks for all the input.