Sprint Filter T12 Air Filter for Off-Road & Extreme – KTM 790 Duke / L (2018–2020) PM175T12

A serviceable assumption about spare parts falls apart at this airbox. The finest medium Sprint Filter makes is not the most expensive one here: the T12 and the fine P14 nonwoven are listed at the same price as each other, and both of them below the standard woven element. Price follows material and manufacture, and neither of those runs parallel to protection. Which means the ordering that matters has to be read from the published figures, not from the shelf.

Key Features

• Dry polyester nonwoven, the extreme-conditions medium: 7 microns at 560 l/m²/sec
• About a ninth of the standard weave's rated passage — the deepest flow trade in the programme
• Same price here as the mid-range P14, and less than the standard element
• Oil-free throughout, so nothing tacky sits ahead of the throttle bodies
• Replaces the paper panel in the untouched 790 airbox; no fabrication, no remap
• Blown clean and refitted for the life of the bike, with two years of warranty

Why the price order tells you nothing

Four media are catalogued for this housing and their prices do not sort into the same sequence as their filtration. This element and the P14 sit level with each other despite arresting particles half the size, and the racing weave — the coarsest of the lot — is by a distance the dearest. A buyer working from the price list alone would arrive at exactly the wrong conclusion in two directions at once. The figures on the medium are the only sequence with meaning in it.

The sequence that does mean something

Read that way the picture is plain. The standard cloth filters at 80 microns and passes 5,050 litres per square metre per second; this mat filters at 7 and passes 560. Roughly a ninth of the rate, given up permanently, in exchange for arresting particles more than ten times smaller. It is a trade and not a rank: the T12 is drawn for pistes, sand and ground already churned up by something ahead, and a 790 Duke that lives on tarmac is served better by the standard weave. Neither adds power in any case — nothing dropped into a series airbox does, and on the restricted L the ceiling is a licence category rather than an intake part.

Care and cleaning

Servicing the PM175T12 is dry work. Put an air line to the clean face and drive the jet outward through the mat, so what it collected leaves by the side that collected it. Where the load is beyond what air will move, lukewarm water and a little mild detergent take the remainder, rinsed until nothing more comes away. Drying is done in moving air and nothing quicker — heat and flame both destroy the fibres — and the element goes back once it is dry through, untreated. The illustrated sheet is in the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

The T12 for the KTM 790 Duke and 790 Duke L, 2018 to 2020, in the standard airbox. Four machines carry this code, held together by a shared housing rather than a shared engine, and the same housing takes three further Sprint Filter media on slightly longer lists. Quote the code with the model year; the Fitment tab has all four.