Cleaning an oil bath air cleaner

Well, I decided to show how I go about cleaning a Volkswagen oil bath air cleaner. Not just changing the oil in it but actually cleaning the coconut hair that's inside the top part of the air cleaner. Most times the oil in the bottom of the filter barely gets changed and the coconut hair rarely if ever gets cleaned. Here is how I did the one on the baja and it worked great. First, start off by cleaning both the upper and lower portion of the air cleaner with solvent. If you don't have a solvent tank, you can use kerosene or gas but be careful.

 Here you can see how gross the coconut hair is. The engine I pulled this from was blown and the car has not run in over a year. That meant the gas was bad and turned to varnish and that had penetrated into the air cleaner.

 After cleaning it in solvent I get a 5 gallon bucket with hot water and a degreaser. I used some stuff we have at work, but laundry detergent or dishwasher soap works just as well. Let it sit for a few hours and soak. Make sure you give it a shake every 30 minutes or so to break loose the crud inside it.

 after a few hours, I rinsed it off and put it in a bucket of Jet fuel. I used jet fuel because it is plentiful at my work, but some kerosene or diesel fuel will work just fine. I let it sit for another hour or so shaking it occasionally.

 I pulled it out and rinsed it off with some hot water. I then put it in the sun and let it dry out completely. You can see the difference in how the coconut hair looks. It is much better and ready to be installed on the carb as soon as I get it rebuilt. Actually I am going to paint this air cleaner. The one on my other bug was in such good original condition that I run it like it is but this one has more rust than I like to see so I will sand it down and paint it.

Here I am pulling the carb apart so I can soak it in carb cleaner overnight. I will show the rebuilding process on the next post.