I'm interesting in buying a new L3560 or a L4060 with cab but the regen has me a little worried. I test drove a 3560 yesterday at my dealer and overall liked the tractor but was surprised to hear that you have to run it at higher rpm's even when your sitting still. The dealer says that you can no longer let the tractor idle at low rpm's or you'll quickly load some type of muffler which is supposedly expensive to have cleaned. Does this sound right? I'd appreciate some feedback from owners before I pull the trigger.
I have had my 3560 for two years, and it is true that idling will increase the particle accumulation in the dpf filter, BUT the life of these filters is very long, and the regen frequency is pretty low as reported in various posts from users that have the 3560 and 4060s. You get to know your tractor, and if you watch the bar graph you get some sense of what is going on. The L 60 series tractors have entirely different engines and dpf regen mechanisms from the 3350s. There have been no problems reported on this forum of consistant regen problems in this series like some of the 3350s. Under my very gentle use the tractor has regenerated about 6 or 7 times in 2 years and 200 some hours. Regens take about 15 min. It accumulates about 2-4% of the filter to warm the tractor up, and then either adds no more, accumulates very slowly, or DECREASES if you are using the tractor hard, eg I could burn off 20% mowing the back pasture. I don't think I will require a new dpf filter within my lifetime.
So the only user practices that I would recommend is consolidate your tractor uses as much as possible to minimize cold starts, turn the tractor off if you need to stop work for more than a few minutes, use as high an rpm as makes sense for the task, and don't worry about it. The engine design gives it good fuel efficiency at high rpm's
In my opinion the features in the 60 series are worth every nickel. I bougnt mine without really knowing what they were, but really appreciate them. If you are thinking of a cab you will really want this series, just look at the noise threads for cabs on the B2650s, and I have just been looking at them, since I can't face another MI winter. The 60 series have a different kind of transmission so there is less noise for the cab to magnify.