Fantom Fury find.

[cam2s]

Had the good fortune to find a Fantom Fury this weekend. Seems to be in great shape! Haven’t had time to go through it and clean it up but it looks like it shouldn’t need much attention. Now I have to trio as well! Did these have any kind of a motor prefilter or screen? Or was it like the Fantom Thunder?

 

[babykeem]

I think they have motor prefilter

 

[niclonnic]

Nope

The Fantom Fury does NOT have a prefilter of any kind. Therefore, all the fine dust is passed through the motor and into the HEPA filter. I know that for a fact because I used to own a Fury very similar to yours. When I used mine as a daily driver, the motor got thrown off balance due to the aforementioned design flaw. I had to mail the motor off to the seller here on Vacuumland to have it serviced. When it was mailed back to me, the motor sounded normal again. From that point on, I preserved my Fury as a collector's item and eventually sold it.

Anyway, congratulations on the find; the Fantom Fury is an excellent piece of vacuum cleaner history!

 

[dysonman1]

The pre-motor filter is a screen located under a rubber flap at the rear top right of the machine. It's called a "fluff trap" and it is designed to keep lint and fluff from getting into the fans. The Thunder has one too at the bottom (inside the trap door). One of the reasons Fantom is out of business is because they pissed James Dyson off over that. The Fantom used Dyson patents, but they didn't use his pre-motor filter design because as they said to Mr. Dyson: "We are in the BUSINESS of SELLING Hepa filters". They didn't mind passing the fine dust into the Hepa filter because you had to buy new ones (at $75 a pop). When Dyson designed his MEMA filters (Maximum Efficiency - Maximum Airflow) that were washable, he shared that with Fantom because they were entitled to use his patents on the new filters. They didn't want to use them and Dyson did not sign a new contract for them to use his patents - and Fantom (dual cyclone) went away. Greed will get ya.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Didn't the early Fantoms (pre 1994/95) not have a HEPA filter, or any filter at all at the exhaust? From what I recall it was added later on, and also they could be used without the HEPA filter and housing in place. I suspect a lot of dust was passed into the air without the filter, as the only filtration would be the dual cyclones.

 

[cam2s]

Yes I do believe the HEPA filter was an option on the Thunder, it does come come right off. After taking the Fury apart for a cleaning I did come across the fluff trap. Better than nothing I suppose.

 

[dysonman1]

The Vectrons and early Thunders had no HEPA filter. That all changed in 1992 when the HEPA filter was an option, and in 1993 it came with all new Thunders.