Sprint Filter T12 Air Filter for Off-Road & Extreme – KTM 1090 Adventure / R (2016–2019) PM155T12

Two Sprint Filter elements from opposite ends of the company's range carry the 1090 Adventure and 1090 Adventure R on their fitment lists. One is the F1-85 racing weave: 85 microns of filtration and a rated 15,000 litres per square metre per second. The other is this T12, at 7 microns and 560. Same motorcycle, same airbox, and a factor of roughly twenty-seven between those two flow figures. A catalogue that offers one machine both of them is not naming a best filter. It is showing how wide the question is.

Key Features

• Dry polyester nonwoven at the fine end of the range: 7 µm, 560 l/m²/sec
• The standard P08 sits between the extremes at 80 µm and 5,050 l/m²/sec
• About a ninth of that P08 passage, exchanged for a far lower retention threshold
• Never oiled, so there is no dose to judge and no film able to travel downstream
• Direct replacement in the original airbox — nothing modified, no remap needed
• Cleaned and refitted for the life of the machine; two years of warranty from purchase

A range is a description, not a ladder

It is tempting to read a filter range as a hierarchy with a cheap end and a good end. It is nothing of the kind. Every step towards a finer medium is bought with flow, and every step towards flow is paid for in what gets through; that is the whole of it, and the same airbox on the same 1090 can be given either answer. The racing weave exists for an engine drawing everything it can from clean air over a short distance. This mat exists for air with a visible load in it. Between the two sits the P08, which is the answer most 1090s should be given.

Which end this bike belongs at

Nothing about the model settles that; the roads do. A 1090 covering dry unsealed tracks for days on end, in the dust of a group or of a dry season, meets exactly the material a 7-micron mat was drawn to arrest, hour after hour. A 1090 used mainly on sealed roads pays the same ninth of the standard passage for a load it hardly encounters. Neither choice is a power decision in any case: a drop-in element in an unaltered box adds no output to this V-twin. What they offer is an intake restriction that begins below a paper panel's and can be restored with compressed air.

Care and cleaning

The whole service is dry — the advantage of this medium far from a workshop. Apply compressed air to the clean face of the PM155T12 and push it outwards, so the load leaves by the surface that arrested it. If more went in than air brings out, lukewarm water and a mild detergent finish the work; rinse until the water is clear. Drying is then a matter of open air and time, with no heat and no flame anywhere near the fibres, and the element goes back only when it is dry through its full thickness. The maintenance sheet is in the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

Made for the KTM 1090 Adventure and 1090 Adventure R, 2016 to 2019, in the standard airbox. Six machines carry this code: the 1090, the 790 and 890 Adventure, the 890 Adventure R Rally, the 1290 Super Adventure and the Husqvarna Norden 901. The Fitment tab lists each with its years.