Sprint Filter T12 Air Filter for Off-Road & Extreme – Suzuki V-Strom 1000XT (2018–2019) PM253T12

The XT ran for two model years and differed from the standard V-Strom 1000 in the places you can point at: tubeless wire-spoked wheels, hand guards, a lower engine cover. Every one of those items is chassis. The intake tract underneath is the same one, and the element Suzuki put in it was specified for the same air as every other V-Strom. A motorcycle equipped to leave the tarmac still has to breathe whatever it finds out there, and that part of the specification was never adapted. The Sprint Filter T12 PM253T12 adapts it: a dry polyester special non-woven filtering to 7 microns, made for off-road use, dust and desert conditions.

Key Features

• A dry polyester special non-woven, filtering to 7 microns
• Rated at 560 l/m²/sec — the flow figure that belongs to a medium this fine
• Never oiled, so no film sits ahead of the throttle bodies or the air sensor
• Direct fit in the series airbox: nothing cut, nothing remapped, homologation untouched
• Washable and reusable, with compressed air as the everyday service
• Warranty runs for two years from the day it is bought

Equipment is not filtration

Spoked wheels let you run lower pressures on a rough surface. Hand guards keep branches off your fingers. A sump guard stops a rock ending the trip. None of it bears on what the engine draws in, and on an unsealed road that is the load which reaches furthest into the motor. Dust is taken in continuously for as long as you are moving, at a rate set by throttle opening, not by how rough the going looks, and the element is all that stands between it and the bores. Suzuki equipped the XT to survive the ground. The medium in the airbox is the part of that outfit an owner has to specify themselves.

The trade, stated plainly

A finer weave holds back more and passes less. Across the range that reads: P08 at 80 microns and a rated 5,050 l/m²/sec, P037 at 37 microns and 4,500, P14 at 14 microns and 1,800, T12 at 7 microns and 560. This is not a better P08, it is the far end of the same trade, and on a big touring twin it asks for a real share of the available flow. If your XT meets dust in a serious way — piste, long dry gravel stages, riding inside a group's cloud — that price is defensible. If it mostly covers sealed roads and the wire wheels are there for load and looks, buy the P08 and keep the flow.

Care and cleaning

Compressed air does the routine work: apply it to the clean face and the dust is pushed back out the way it arrived. If a stage has left more behind than air will shift, lukewarm water and a mild detergent will lift the rest; rinse until nothing more comes out. Dry it in open air only — no heat source, no flame — and put it back dry. The maintenance sheet can be downloaded from the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

Made for the Suzuki V-Strom 1000XT of 2018 and 2019, dropping straight into the factory airbox where the original element sat. The same element covers four machines: the V-Strom 1000 and V-Strom 1000XT up to 2019, and the V-Strom 1050 and V-Strom 1050XT from 2020 onwards. The complete list is in the Fitment tab.