Sprint Filter T12 Air Filter for Off-Road & Extreme – KTM 1290 Super Adventure R/S (2015–2026) PM155T12

Large adventure bikes travel in company more than most motorcycles do: organised tours, a group of friends on a two-week loop, a pair of machines crossing a country. That has a consequence for an air filter which no map will show you. On a dry unsealed road the rider at the front gets the cleanest air of the day and everyone behind gets what the front wheel lifted. Two 1290 Super Adventures on the same road on the same afternoon are not breathing the same air, and the difference is not the route — it is the position in the line.

Key Features

• Sprint Filter's finest medium: polyester nonwoven, used dry, 7 µm at 560 l/m²/sec
• The P08 for this airbox is rated 80 µm and 5,050 l/m²/sec — nine times the flow
• Free of oil for its whole life, so nothing can be drawn forward onto a sensor
• Original airbox, original fixings, standard mapping: only the element changes
• Cleaned with compressed air and reused; the warranty runs two years from purchase
• Roughly double the filtering surface of other performance elements

Hanging dust, and who has to ride through it

Dust raised on a dry track does not disperse quickly in still air, and a column of motorcycles moves through it faster than it settles. The second rider takes a share, the fourth takes considerably more, and anyone behind vehicles heavier than a motorcycle takes more again. Nothing about the machine changes this and nothing about riding style does either; it is decided by where you sit in the group and what is ahead of you. A rider usually mid-column on unsealed roads asks far more of the airbox than the same rider on the same route alone.

What the finer mat costs to have

The price of that protection is plain in the numbers: 560 litres per square metre per second against 5,050 for the standard P08 in the same housing — roughly one ninth of the passage, surrendered for a threshold more than ten times finer. It is the steepest exchange in the range, charged on the motorway home as surely as on the piste. What it does not do is add power. No element dropping into a standard airbox makes a 1290 Super Adventure stronger, whatever the medium. The honest benefit is duller: a starting restriction below a disposable panel's, restored to the beginning at every clean.

Care and cleaning

Servicing needs no consumables and no oil at all. Hold an air line to the clean side of the PM155T12 and work outwards, so the dust leaves through the surface that trapped it. Once air alone stops shifting it, lukewarm water with mild detergent takes the rest; rinse until the water comes away clear. The drying step has a rule attached — open air only, never a heat source and never a flame — and it is refitted only when dry all the way through. Sprint Filter's own sheet is in the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

For the KTM 1290 Super Adventure R and 1290 Super Adventure S, 2015 to 2026, in the standard airbox. Six machines carry this code: the 1290, the 790 and 890 Adventure, the 890 Adventure R Rally, the 1090 Adventure and the Husqvarna Norden 901. The Fitment tab lists each with its years.