Sprint Filter P08 Air Filter for Road & Track – Honda CBR500R (2019–2026) CM220S

The CBR500R is a motorcycle a great many riders learn to spanner on. Nothing about it is hostile: the fasteners are where you expect them, the tank lifts with hand tools, and the airbox is reachable on a Saturday morning without a lift or a workshop manual open at three pages at once. For a lot of owners the air filter is the first service item they do themselves instead of booking in. That changes what the part is, because a job you do yourself is a job you will look at properly — and once you have the airbox open, what matters is whether the element inside is something you replace or something you clean and put back.

Key Features

• Dry from first day to last: no oil to wash out and none to put back
• Polyester thread from 22 micrometres, woven — a fabric, not pressed paper fibre
• The filtering surface is around twice what other performance air filters give you
• Fits the standard airbox in place of the original — nothing modified, nothing remapped
• Sprint Filter builds it to last the life of the motorcycle, washed rather than replaced
• Two years of warranty, dated from purchase

The one service item that stops coming back

Doing your own maintenance is mostly a question of which jobs recur. Oil and filters come round on a schedule you cannot argue with; chain and pads follow how you ride. The air filter is the odd one out, because whether it recurs at all depends entirely on what is fitted. A paper element is consumed by design — it is meant to be thrown away, and every interval brings another one. The P08 CM220S is polyester woven from threads of at least 22 micrometres, and it does not soften, swell or shed with age. You clean it and refit the same part. Over an ownership that runs to years rather than seasons, that is one line on the shopping list that simply stops appearing.

Honest about what it does

It is worth being straight about this: an insert filter does not make a standard CBR500R noticeably quicker. The 471 cc twin is not restricted by its airbox in any way you would feel through the throttle, and anyone promising horsepower from a drop-in element is selling you something else. What the P08 gives you is a lower intake restriction that stays where it is between cleanings, instead of climbing steadily as a paper element loads up. The bike does not get faster; it stops getting slower in the way a neglected filter makes it. On a machine kept for the long term and serviced at home, that consistency is the whole point.

Care and cleaning

Two rules, and the rest follows: never oil it, never put heat or a flame near it. The routine job is compressed air from the clean side, blown outwards. When that is not enough, lukewarm water and a mild detergent, rinsed until the water runs clear, then left in air until dry all the way through. Refit it dry. The Sprint Filter maintenance sheet is in the Downloads tab.

Fitment & Compatibility

Made for the Honda CBR500R from 2019 to 2026. The same CM220S element covers six machines across the 400 and 500 twin range; the complete list is in the Fitment tab.