Originally Posted By: Quest
Yes, afoulk, the instructions are indeed correct.
BTW: make sure you ring the foam to rid of excess water (after you wash it in dawn +hot water), air-dry it thoroughly before you oil it in motor oil (any motor oil you have on-hand, typically SAE30 or 10W30 or whatever fresh). Try to rub the oil in to the clean foam (so as to have all the foam cells soaked in oil or at least coated in oil film) before you lightly wring it, not to the point of completely out of oil, but just slightly moist, that's it.
Q.
Correct. Wash ONLY with warm water & dish soap.
But, you don't need to let it dry out after washing it (but you can if you want to), just squeeze as much of the water out of it as you can. Then, dump at least a couple of ounces of fresh motor oil on the clean filter (it doesn't matter what weight it is), let it soak in, work it in thoroughly by massaging it, then squeeze it hard to get out the excess oil (and left over moisture). DO NOT cut the foam lip off from around the outside of the foam element (I have seen a lot of people that do this), the lip acts as a seal for the case halves, and make sure that you put the round plastic or metal support stack back into the middle of the foam element before putting the cover back on. Also, make sure that you have a seal on top of the carb where the air filter mounts down onto. You can easily get 7 or 8 seasons out of one of these filters if you service it this way.
There are several different sizes of these foam elements and, in addition, there are several different shapes. Be sure that you get the right one! The 3.5hp B&S vertical shaft engines from that era use the smaller rectangular shaped filter with kind of cut off top corners, NOT the filter with a pointed end on one side. The B&S part number is 270579.