16000km since I first swapped my stock air filter for a drop in K&N replacement; meant that it was high time I got it serviced. So I dropped by Speedworks to pick up a recharger pack for about 60 bucks.

After yanking out the K&N filter from the airbox, I replaced it temporarily with my old paper element filter so that I could still drive around my car. The first thing I realized was how much heavier the damn K&N is. If the standard filter was a Volkswagon Beetle, the K&N filter is about as heavy as a fully loaded German Panzer tank.

I flipped it over to have a look at how badly clogged the filter is.

It wasn't hard to see that it was way past it's service date. The characteristic red cotton gauze element was practically charcoal black with dirt. And a bug or two thrown in for good measure.

As I opened up the recharger kit, I found a spray bottle of cleaner and a bottle of filter oil, plus a step by step guide to clean the filter.

First thing u need to do is spray the clean side of the K&N filter with the cleaner solution until you completely saturate the cotton element.

Once that's done, flip the filter over to the dirty side and repeat the procedure. Leave it to soak for about 20 minutes. Now I had my reservations about how well the cleaner was going to do it's job, since my filter was pretty clogged up with dirt... not to mention greasy as hell. But I just went with the instructions and hoped for the best.

Once the 20 minutes have passed by, it was time to rinse the cleaner off with plenty of clean running water. Important thing to remember is to run the water through the clean side of the filter; this is to make sure you do not drive the dirt further into the cotton gauze element. Let the water run until you stop seeing oily residue floating on the water which passed through the filter.

When I picked up the filter, I was very very suprised to see how clean the filter element was! No dirt was to be seen anywhere... and all I did was run water through the damn thing. No scrubbing, no high pressure water, no industrial strength detergent... (and these are to be avoided at all cost as it could damage the filter). However, the red filter element was now practically white since all the filter oil have been removed by the cleaner solution.

The next thing to do is to let the K&N filter element dry naturally. This is very important  before you can move on to the next step. SoI left the filter to dry for a full day.

Once it's dry, you can start reoiling the filter element with the bottle of oil in the recharger kit. Make sure that you drip the oil on the cotton gauze sparingly, as a soaking wet K&N filter can wreak havoc on your MAP/MAF sensor, or worse, damage your engine (I'm keeping my fingers crossed I didn't screw up this part... it's so tempting to soak the filter with the red filter oil). It's easy to see when there's enough oil, the filter element will be a shade of nice red.

And voila... that's about it. Touch up any white area spots which you may have missed with some additional oil. And you're done! That's it... straight forward and simple.

You now have a clean K&N filter which is as good as new... ;)