John,
There is a good article on Bob Westerman's page about the Donaldson Air cleaner, I highly reccomend it, in fact its so good it should be nominated for an award, and yes, I wrote it... You can not and should not try to pry the mesh element out of the air cleaner, it does not come out. All you need to do is submerge the metal element in kerosene or diesel fuel and flush it out, I don't reccomend gas, too volitile and I like my friends just the way they are, RAW, not over cooked. After its clean, clean out the bowl and squirt some clean oil on the mesh, fill the bowl to the right level with good clean oil and your good to go. These air cleaners are pretty old technology, but they really work, in fact we just started selling dry paer filters to tractor manufactureres in India about 10 years ago. They were putting oil baths on new vehicles up until then... Yes, I work for Donaldson..
