After I posted yesterday, I got started on my project for the day. I wanted to check the air filter element on our Can Am Spyder. Although the dealer assured me that a complete service had been recently done, I wanted to verify. Getting to the intake air box would require removal of some of the plastic body panels – on sportbikes we referred to the panels as tupperware.

Can Am Spyder with body panels in place

After looking at the body section of the service manual, removal of the panels seemed pretty straightforward. They are held in place with a combination of T30 torx head screws and reuseable plastic rivets. I started by removing the left upper panel.

Left upper panel removed – it’s dusty in there

Then I went to the other side and removed the right upper panel.

Air box revealed with right upper panel off

Next I took off the center upper panel.

Upper panels removed for access to airbox

There was a lot of dust on everything – probably from our time in Lake Havasu City at the dirt rodeo grounds.

The airbox is engineered to draw in fresh air through snorkels in the bottom half facing the front of the Spyder. The air travels up through a paper filter element. The clean air is then drawn through trumpets into the twin draft throttle body.

Twin trumpets on the 57mm throttles

The throttle body looked good – clean with no carbon build up. The entire upper airbox chamber was clean with very little evidence of oil coming through the breather. I’ve read on Spyder forums such as SpyderLovers.com that some people have experienced issues with oil getting into the airbox. The size and shape of the airbox chambers, snorkels and trumpets are carefully designed. The objective is to create a Helmholtz resonator that will resonate at certain frequencies. This can be tuned to create pressure waves. If the pressure wave frequency coincides with maximum torque rpm, it can have a bit of a supercharging effect when the throttles are opened.

When I pulled the air filter element out, I could see it was recently replaced. That was the good news. Then I saw something else. A mouse or chipmunk or some other critter had found its way through the intake snorkel into the lower airbox chamber. It must have thought it was an ideal place for a food cache. There was pasta, Fruit Loops cereal and tortilla chips in the bottom of the airbox!

Food cache inside the airbox

I cleaned it out and came up with nearly a cup of stuff. No harm was done since the foodstuff was on the dirty side of the intake system and couldn’t get past the air filter element. Once I had it cleaned out, it was just a matter of reassembling everything in reverse order.

My next task was to dump and flush our holding tanks. While I was doing that, I noticed something different about our neighbor’s coach. It looked like a common diesel pusher, but it wasn’t. It’s a Winnebago Destination built on a Workhorse UFO chassis equipped with a gasoline GM Vortec 8.1 liter (496 cubic inch) V8 engine. The engine is in the rear like a diesel pusher – the radiator is in the back as well. I’ve heard of these before but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before. You can tell it has the Vortec V8 when you see the dual three-inch exhaust pipes in the back.

Note the dual exhaust pipes tipping off the V8 gasoline engine

I spent the remainder of the afternoon reading. Donna’s flight back from Cincinnati didn’t arrive until after 11pm. By the time she got home, it was after midnight and I was out for the count.

Today we have cooler temperatures – the high is expected to be in the mid-70s. We went up to the sports complex to play pickleball shortly after 8am this morning for the scheduled drop-in play. But someone changed the schedule to round robin play beginning at 9am. It was poorly organized and resulted in long waiting times between games. Donna opted to go for a run. She put in 5.6 miles – her longest nonstop run in 10 years. She said she felt like Forrest Gump!

We’re heading out to a surprise birthday party later this afternoon. Until then, I think I’ll just kick back and read a book.