This is a warning to anyone using the Spectre 48056 filter with their Caddman set up. You may want to check your filter now. The pictures below are from a four day old filter. As you can see the rubber gasket is literally falling apart. Pieces of this debris were sucked up into my engine at the most inopportune time.

I was rolling down an on-ramp building up speed to jump onto Interstate-70. Doing about 45 MPH I punched the throttle to get up to highway speed when all of the sudden I lost all power. My engine was still running, but not producing any HP and it sounded like my air intake was clogged, much like the sound of a piece of paper being sucked by the house of a vacuum. I had cagers speeding up behind me, so I ditched off onto the shoulder, puttered to a stop and I killed the engine not knowing WTF was going on. Stuck at the bottom of an off-ramp and near the entrance of an on-ramp I was in a bad place for 5:45 on a Friday. I know I needed to move, so I fired up the engine and man did it run poorly, kind of like it was only using one cylinder. I limped to the next exit and rolled into a parking lot and killed the engine.

Having no idea where to start I pulled off the right cover of my air cleaner and discovered the failing gasket. You can imagine I was pretty ticked off. With a thunderstorm brewing, being far from home and having no one to call to bail me out, I decided to try to make it home. I pulled off as much of that crumbling rubber as I could, put the filter back on and cautiously thumbed the starter. The engine coughed out a small backfire then revved to life. This time it sounded and felt normal. I decided to take side street home and laid off the throttle, allowing as little air as possible into the engine, least I risk sucking more of that crap into the engine.

I made it home and now tap out this post. The filter was installed in Tuesday morning, so it is not a case of it being old and brittle. It is a case of these filters being crap. Now I have no idea how much of this crap got sucked into my engine or how big a problem this could actually be. Is it possible that these little chunks of rubber were simply burned up or are they lodged somewhere near my valves just waiting to cause catastrophic damage? Should I tear apart my engine to try to track them down or just say the hell with it and ride on? Anyone with more mechanical engine knowledge than I that wants to share an opinion I would love to read it.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

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I use that filter without problems so far. However I'm using the stock backplate (modified). Any chance you cranked down on the cover to much

Originally Posted by rkr0923

I'm using the stock backplate (modified). Any chance you cranked down on the cover to much

Anything is possible, but I don't think I cranked it down too much. It seemed like I torqued the cover just tight enough so it wouldn't rotate from vibration.

How did you modify your back-plate? Have you posted any pictures?

im using the stock backplate as well. i just applied foam tape around the top edge to get an airtight seal hav not had any probs either. filter is about 3 months old

My first thought was wow another Mean Streak rider on the forum here in Denver, cool. Your engine will be fine rubber burns up and goes out the exhaust, you may have just gotten a bad or old stock filter get another one and try it.

Originally Posted by hagger

My first thought was wow another Mean Streak rider on the forum here in Denver, cool.

Nice, I've had my bike since December, ride almost everyday when there is not snow on the ground, and have yet to see another Streak on the road. Glad to know I'm not alone here in the land of Harleys and Hondas.

Originally Posted by hagger

Your engine will be fine rubber burns up and goes out the exhaust, you may have just gotten a bad or old stock filter get another one and try it.

Yeah, once I started it the second time and the engine ran fine I figured (or hoped) it was going to be OK. I would just hate to have my engine fail because I did something stupid or assumed I was in the clear. I will probably go back to stock for a few days then order a K&N filter. I know they are a few more bucks, but from my experience they are made a bit better.

Thanks for the response