Sprint Filter P08 Air Filter for Road & Track – Kawasaki Ninja 500 / EX 500 (2018–2026) PM164S

For a great many riders the Ninja 500 is the first motorcycle they take apart themselves. It is common, cheap to keep and well documented, so its airbox gets opened on a driveway rather than a workshop ramp. That shifts which risk actually matters. Very little dirt gets past a working air filter; most of what ends up on its wrong side was put there by hand, in the few minutes the box stood open. An element meant to come out and go back in many times over has to make that forgiving, and the Sprint Filter PM164S is built to be handled.

Key Features

• Woven polyester in one dry layer — nothing is applied before fitting and nothing washes out later
• Rated at 80 microns with 5,050 l/m²/sec of airflow, the general-purpose medium of the range
• Thread from ø 22 microns upward; the openings are set by the weave, not by the random pores of pressed pulp
• Around double the working cloth of a typical performance element
• Occupies the standard airbox exactly as the paper panel did — nothing trimmed, no remap
• Serviceable for as long as the motorcycle lasts, with two years of warranty from purchase

The ten minutes that decide it

Open the airbox of a bike that lives outdoors and the lid comes away carrying its own layer of road film. Lift the element straight up and some of that drops onto the clean face, where nothing downstream will catch it again. So the sequence matters more than the choice of part: wipe the box before unclipping it, lift the element without dragging it across the rim, and check the sealing lip before the lid goes back on. None of that is difficult. It is simply the half of the job with consequences, while the half people agonise over rarely has any.

What the element does, and how it really dies

Be plain about the benefit. A drop-in filter does not make a standard Ninja 500 noticeably quicker, and any listing that promises it is selling something else. What it offers is an intake restriction that returns to where it began every time it is cleaned instead of drifting upward unseen, plus a line deleted from the shopping list. Its genuine failure mode is not dust but handling: a torn corner, a fold crushed flat, a sealing edge stretched by pulling from the wrong side. Treated as a component rather than a consumable, it outlasts several sets of tyres.

Care and cleaning

Compressed air does most of the work. Aim it at the clean face so the dirt leaves the way it came in, and keep the nozzle back so the cloth is not driven into its own folds. When the PM164S has picked up something air will not shift, wash it in lukewarm water with a little mild detergent and rinse clear. Let it dry in moving air — never with a heat gun, a radiator or a flame, since heat ruins polyester — then refit it dry. The Sprint Filter maintenance sheet sits in the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

Cut for the standard airbox of the Kawasaki Ninja 500 / EX 500 built from 2018 to 2026. The same element is listed for eleven machines, from the Ninja 250 and ZX-25R to the Eliminator and the Bimota KB399. The complete list is in the Fitment tab.