Sprint Filter P08 F1-85 Air Filter for Racing – Kawasaki Ninja 250 (2018–2026) PM164S F1-85

A Kawasaki Ninja 250 is very often somebody's first track bike, and the first track bike is where the most money gets spent on the wrong things. So the useful sentence comes first: this element will not find you lap time. The P08 F1-85 flows 15,000 l/m²/sec against the 5,050 of the standard P08, but a stock 249 cc twin cannot use a fraction of that, and the seconds available to a rider at this stage are in tyres, suspension setup, brake fluid and track time. The PM164S F1-85 is a competition part, and it is worth buying for competition reasons rather than for the hope of an advantage.

Key Features

• Dry polyester, never oiled — nothing to migrate onto sensors or throttle bodies
• Filtering surface roughly double the area of other performance filters
• P08 F1-85 racing medium, flowing 15,000 l/m²/sec — roughly three times the standard P08
• Filtration at 85 microns: a wider aperture than the road medium, deliberately so
• Washable and reusable — compressed air from the clean side, and that is the service
• Fits the standard airbox — no modification and no remap required to install

When it does start to make sense

There is a point at which this element belongs on a Ninja 250, and it is a specific one: when the intake path has been opened up, the exhaust changed and the mapping adjusted, so the engine is finally asking for everything that arrives. Fitted at the right moment it is the correct part; fitted first it is an expensive way to filter slightly less well. That last phrase is not a figure of speech: the F1-85 works at 85 microns where the standard P08 works at 80, so the coarser weave is the thing being paid for alongside the flow. Racing tolerates it because the engine is stripped on a schedule counted in running hours. A first track bike that also rides on the road every week is not being maintained that way.

The part of it that helps a novice immediately

One benefit does not depend on any of that. A washable element removes a consumable from a track day. It comes out, gets blown through with whatever compressor is in the paddock and goes back in, which means no spare to carry and nothing to run out of on a Sunday. For a rider learning to prepare a bike, that is a genuinely useful habit to form early, and it costs nothing after the first purchase — Sprint Filter designs the element to last the life of the motorcycle.

Care and cleaning

Whatever compressor is in the paddock will do the job: clean side, blow outwards, refit dry, and the PM164S F1-85 is ready for the next session. At the end of a weekend it can have lukewarm water and a mild detergent, rinsed until the water runs clear and then left to dry fully in air — never with heat, never near a flame, and never in a hurry. It is never oiled, before washing or after. The Sprint Filter maintenance sheet is in the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

Made for the Kawasaki Ninja 250 from 2018 to 2026. The same PM164S F1-85 element covers eleven machines built around this airbox; the complete list is in the Fitment tab.