Product Review - No Toil Air Filter Oil & Cleaner

One of the great pains of riding a dirt bike is having to clean the filter often - depending on the dust conditions every 1-4 rides.  Think of it, you have to spray the dirty filter with an aerosol solvent…a lot of it to get the filter clean.  Then you add filter oil after its clean and dry.  Sound simple, but its a dirty job and it sucks.  Oh yeah, the filter oil and cleaner is about $16 together for a 12-16oz can of each and lasts for about five filter worths for the cleaner and maybe eight oilings.

Because I’m cheap, I was in the market for additional filters to have ready on the shelf for exchange and do the cleaning all at once.  I saw that rockymountainatv.com had my filter for $10.99 already pre-oiled from No-Toil.  Oh, I’m lazy too so this pro-longed the future cleanings even more.  I bought two.

I also bought a 60oz wt. of the filter cleaner for $20 and a 16 oz can of filter oil - all No-Toil brand.  The claim was that the filters were pre-treated with biodegradable oil and the cleaner was non-toxic and could be put down the kitchen sink drain.  I actually viewed this as a negative because I thought the cleaner would not be very good.

Both No-Toil filters were very dirty, but the inside was perfectly clean (woohoo!) so they did their job.  When it came time to do the cleanings, I busted open the cleaner.  To my surprise, the cleaner was in a powder form.  I mixed it with water as directed in a small bucket and dumped the first filter in there.  With a few squeezes, the filter was almost perfectly clean.  A few more squeezes and I was done.

Then I threw the really dirty one in there.  Again, the same results…after a few squeezes, the dirt was removed.  The final filter was a standard oiled filter.  I cleaned it with the solvent stuff first, then dipped it into the bucket with the same dirty water.  Again, the results were the same.

Its very rare that I am wow’ed by a product these days, but I was.  The oiling process was no different or no less messy than the standard stuff.  The magic is in the cleaner.  It was so easy, didn’t make a complete mess, could be done without ‘proper ventilation’ unlike the solvent types, and was green.  The green part really isn’t a deal maker for me, but hey it is what it is.

Did I mention that this was the cheapest oil and cleaner on the market?

The Good:

  • The cleaner works better than any other I have used (PJ1, Motul, Bel-Ray, etc.)
  • There is virtually no cleanup afterwards.
  • Its cheap - $20 for 60oz = 30 cleanings of 4 filters = 120 filter cleanings!
  • The oil is no worse or better than others (but still cheaper)
  • Its green - so you can sleep at night not worrying about Al Gore knocking on your front door.

The Bad:

  • If this can be considered a bad, the two (No-Toil oil and cleaner) must be used exclusively together.  They do not work with other products.

The Ugly:

  • What the hell am I going to do with all my petrol based cleaner and oil?

My overall rating:
*****

I am very happy with this cleaner and oil.  Its cheap, readily available, and very effective.  It took away the worst part of the routine maintenance of riding the dirt bike.  Try it.  You will not be disappointed.

One Comment

For my first air filter clean/re-oil on my new dirtbike, I tried No-Toil. It came highly recommend by my local cycle parts proprietor who has decades of off-road experience. And he never recommends a particular item lightly.

If nothing else, I really like the fact that I can use water, instead of solvent, to take care of this regular maintenance.

I also like your idea of buying a second filter and having it ready to go. That’ll keep me from rushing to get it done the night before a ride.

Rhino

Comment by rhino | October 12th, 2008 9:12 pm | Permalink

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