Disclaimer: This proceedure is not approved by Yamaha!  Gasoline is dangerous!  DO NOT perform this proceedure!

Keeping your air filter clean is critical for maintaining peak engine performance and for protecting your vital moving parts from contaminants.  There are commercial kits available for cleaning your filter but considering the cost of those kits I opt for doing it myself.

Required parts:
1 pint of Valvoline 2 stroke motor oil.
½ gallon of fresh, clean gasoline (gasoline is dangerous, DO NOT perform this proceedure!).
Clean, empty two liter Coke bottle (a Pepsi bottle might work, but Rhinos prefer Coke!).

1- Remove your seats and center console.  Locate the air box cover and remove it by unsnapping the four catches (two on each side).  Remove the air box lid.

2- The filter simply compresses into place.  Grab the forward end of the filter and pull up to pop it out of place.

3- Once the filter pops out of place, remove it from the Rhino.

4- Cut the Coke bottle off pretty even with the top of the filter.  You don't want to use anything deeper than the filter is tall because you must prevent dirty gasoline from entering through the center of the filter without first passing through the filter element.  Using the Coke bottle is perfect in that its not tall enough to allow dirty gas to spill over into the center of the filter anyway.  Once the Coke bottle is cut, place the filter inside it and fill the bottle by pouring gasoline directly into the center hole of the filter until the bottle is full.

5- Slowly work the filter up and down in the Coke bottle 10-20 times like a cylinder moving up and down in a sleeve.  Be careful not to cut the element on the bottle edges.  The gasoline will dilute the old oil on the filter and wash away the grit and grime on the element.

6- Once you've worked it up and down enough to clean all the crud off, set the filter out to dry in the sun.  You can speed up the drying process using compressed air from the center if you like, but that could prove even more hazardous by spraying gasoline on yourself so it is not recommended.  Unless time is a factor, I like to leave mine out all day long in the sun.  If the gasoline does not have time to evaporate totally it will break down the new oil you pour on the filter thus defeating the entire purpose of using an oil bath filter.

7- With a catch pan under your clean filter, pour the 2 stroke oil all over the new element.  Don't worry about using to much, I always use the entire pint.  The excess oil that runs off the filter will get caught in the catch pan, and any excessive oil left on the filter will get sucked into the intake and burned off in the first 10 minutes.  Your machine may hesitate slightly for the first couple of minutes but it clears up within a few minutes.  A couple minutes of slight hesitation is a small price to pay in order to ensure that you have enough oil on your filter.

8- Filter installation is simply the reverse process of steps 3-2-1.  Put on your air box cover and idle the engine for a minute, then take it out for a test ride accelerating slowing to give the machine time to adjust to burning off the excess oil that gets sucked in.

The cost of an air filter cleaning kit is about $14 at my local auto parts store.  My method costs about $4 and I certainly believe it to be as effective as anything else......probably more so as 2 stroke oil is slightly more "sticky" than the oil in the filter cleaning kits.  There is nothing new about using 2 stroke engine oil on oil bath filters, as this same procedure has been used on tractors since the '40s.

Disclaimer: This proceedure is not approved by Yamaha!  Gasoline is dangerous!  DO NOT perform this proceedure!

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