Twin Air Bio System Review: I'm not happy.

I got this because of the idea it's "bio - friendly". Supposedly that means you can wash it with water with their special soap. I bought the whole kit: http://www.twinair.com/usa/twin-air-bio-system. As the Twin Air site says, "The system includes BIO Liquid Power filter oil (1L), BIO Dirt Remover  (1L), a cleaning tub with cages, an oiling tub, gloves and contact cleaner."

A new filter is $29 on Amazon. Not cheap. I paid about $80 for the "cleaning and oiling kit. So financially, if you can clean the filter three of more times, it's cheaper to clean the filters than to replace them. And filters get dirty quickly on a dirt bike, so you need to replace your filter often. I bought two spare filters in addition to the one on the bike and planned on cleaning them in batches when dirty. The Twin Air Bio System Kit has enough cleaner and oil to do 5-10 filters, depending on how you do it and how clean you try to get your filters.  I got about 5 or 6 filters cleaned and oiled before I used up all the cleaner and oil. If you want to do a good job it takes at least an hour to clean a filter, and then it has to dry at least an hours (overnight is best) before oiling. And then the oil needs to dry at least a couple hours (again, overnight is best).

I've used this "Twin Air Bio System" kit about four times now (sometimes I cleaned two filters at a time).  If you are willing to spend an hour cleaning your filters, you can get them "mostly" clean. Use smoking hot water and all the detergent they recommend, which is a lot (100ml detergent for 3 liters of water). For two filters I used 6 liters of water to mostly fill the bucket and 200 ml of detergent. Squeeze the filters in the boiling hot water  and soak and then do that again every 15 minutes. Repeat until "kind of" clean. But an hour to clean the filters? And then you have to dry and oil them of course.

And I'll note; the top cage in the kit, that is supposedly used to keep the filter submerged? Doesn't work. The cage just slips up the inside of the bucket and the filter floats to the top.

I'll also note this bio cleaner is caustic. Meaning it will burn your skin. Gloves and protective eyewear are required. And it smells pretty sharp too. Be careful!

"Bio": What does that mean? It requires gloves to handle the stuff! The MSDS says: "Do not allow to enter sewers/surface or ground water." "Must not be disposed together with household garbage. Do not allow product to reach sewage system."
So what am I supposed to do with the gallon of this stuff that remains after every filter cleaning?

Here is a picture of the inside of the filter after TWO separate one hour cleanings with hot water as per the directions. All those green drops are oil left behind after the cleaning.

And here is a closeup of a patch of oil and dirt at the edge of the filter I just coundn't get out no matter how much I scrubbed.

Here is the outside of the filter, it still has some oil in the seams but it looks OK:

Filter after drying for 24 hours, oiling and drying 24 hours again:

After installing the filter, if the bike sits for a week I find green spots under the bike from dripping filter oil. And it's really tough to clean off the frame tubes. I really do squeeze all the the oil out of the filter I can and I even press it between paper towels. And then I let it dry at least 24 hours before installing it. But it still drips when the bike sits:

The kit comes with a special smaller tub for oiling the filters. The idea is you can keep the tub full of the oil between uses. However, the tub lid cracked. This oil contains volatiles, to keep it thin to spread throughout the filter. But the cracked lid will let the volatiles evaporate and escape, leaving you with oil that is too think to be effective.  If the kit had been used a lot or was many years old, I'd accept the crack. But it's only a year old and has been used only 4 times.

So the negatives:
- if you want a really clean filter, it takes work. Say an hour, and it won't be clean like new, just mostly clean. You will still have oil stuck on the filter in streaks and at the edges. And then add 2 overnights to dry the clean and then oiled filters.
- it's caustic. Be careful.
- the top cage in the kit doesn't really work to hold the filter submerged.
- "Bio": total BS.
- Drips out of the filter while the bike is parked.
- Lid cracked.
- How do you dispose of the caustic and oily cleaning solution after use?

I'm sick of this stuff. It doesn't work well for me, takes lots of time and is caustic.

Maybe I'll try "No Toil"...