The Rade Garage airbox makes contact with the seat on most 701s, reducing the usable surface area of an already small filter and – presumably – reducing air flow. That’s not so good. This simple modification is inspired by (well, blatantly copied from) Dominic Thorburn on the Husqvarna 701 Facebook group. As Facebook posts are not the best way of preserving things like this for posterity I thought I would post a quick guide here.
You’l need to pop your airbox off – undo the jubilee clip at the throttle body side and give it a good tug. Next you’ll need to remove the KTM “hose” part that you jammed into the RG box when you installed it – the best way to do this is to reach in and “fold” it.
Next grab the airbox; the sleeve on the “bottom” which makes the seal with the KTM hose is pretty long and doesn’t need to be in order to to make a good seal. Take a hacksaw and trim it down by about 7mm. See below. I then tidied mine up with a sharp knife, during which process I stabbed myself in the hand. Ouch.
After patching myself up I cut the little “lugs” off of the hose, they originally seated themselves on the stock airbox, to make sure everything was properly lined up. The lugs serve no purpose with the RB airbox.
Now all you need to do is put it back together. For a little extra security – and because I had some lying around – I packed the part of the hose that the trimmed airbox section sits in with a little silicon sealant; just extra peace of mind that I really, truly, absolutely do have a good seal there. The cutting off of the lugs and the silicon bead are not strictly necessary but as I don’t ever plan to put the bike back to stock I had nothing to loose.
Since doing this modification I’ve been told that Rade has produced a new version of the airbox with a sightly lower profile cage and filter, this solving the problem in all kits sold since mid 2019. As always if anyone has any questions, corrections or suggestions please just give me a shout here or on social media.