Sprint Filter P08 Air Filter for Road & Track – Royal Enfield Bear 650 (2025–2026) CM196S

Every flow rating Sprint Filter publishes is taken across one square metre of clean cloth. That makes it a property of the material rather than a promise about a particular intake, and it leaves the other half of the sum to the motorcycle: how much air the engine pulls through the panel in an hour of riding. The Bear sits in the largest capacity class Royal Enfield occupies in this range, and capacity is a multiplier on that volume. The CM196S is the standard element for its airbox — one dry layer of woven polyester where the paper panel used to sit.

Key Features

• Woven polyester in a single dry layer — no oil when new, none at any service
• Filtration at 80 µm with a rated 5,050 l/m²/sec through clean cloth
• Around double the filtering surface of other performance elements, folded into the standard box
• 93.13 % of the 100-micron fraction held in Sprint Filter's comparison, against 76.42 % for four-layer oiled cotton
• Goes in as the airbox stands: nothing cut, nothing rerouted, no fuelling work
• Cleaned and refitted instead of thrown away; specified for the life of the machine, two-year warranty

Capacity is a multiplier

A 650 and a 350 riding the same lane meet the same air, but they do not pass the same quantity of it through their filters. The volume drawn scales with capacity and with revolutions, so the larger machine reaches any given state of loading sooner on an identical route. None of that argues for a different specification; it argues for a rhythm. The extra cloth buys time before that state arrives, because a load spread thin across a large face is slower to become resistance; being washable makes arriving there cost an air line rather than an order.

What it changes, and what it will not

It will not add power. A drop-in element does not make a standard motorcycle noticeably stronger, and a page suggesting otherwise has stopped describing the part. What is real is an intake resistance that begins low and rises slowly and predictably between services, plus one line fewer on the list of things bought again. If the roads under this machine are genuinely dusty rather than occasionally so, Sprint Filter lists a finer non-woven for the same housing at 14 µm and 1,800 l/m²/sec: more retention, less flow, a trade to be made deliberately rather than a step upwards.

Care and cleaning

Servicing the CM196S is dry work. Hold an air line against the clean face and drive the load back out the way it came in, which is the only direction that works on a medium filtering at its surface. Greasy films want lukewarm water and a little mild detergent, then a thorough rinse. After that, open air only — no heat gun, no radiator, no flame — and refit it dry and untreated. The maintenance sheet is in the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

For the Royal Enfield Bear 650 of 2025 and 2026. The same number covers two further machines on this airbox, the Continental GT 650 and the Interceptor 650, both from 2018 to 2026 — three motorcycles on one part. Check your own year in the Fitment tab before ordering.