L3901 New and Used

[shrimp92]

Hi all,

I have a lawn and landscape business and looking to buy a tractor. I am thinking the L3901 would fit my needs. I have a client that lives on the lake and wants his gravel road graded/leveled from washing. He wants it done every six weeks. There are many uses for a tractor in my business, but I want to make sure that the L3901 is adequate enough for leveling hard pack gravel. I plan to do so with a leveling plane/land leveler. Not sure whether to go with 6' more or less?

My options:

New:

L3901 Gear 4x4, FEL, QA Bucket, R4 tires
Lowest quote came in at $21,700+tax

Used:

L3901 33.8 hrs, Gear 4x4, FEL, R1 AG tires, includes box blade and 2 year extended warranty, bought in November 2014 $18,500+tax

Any advice or wisdom would be appreciated, Thanks Chris

 

[sheepfarmer]

I think the tractor has enough horsepower and weight to do what you want, but one of the guys that does grading a lot can answer better than I can.

The comment I have is that the 3901's have diesel particulate filters to meet tier 4 emissions standards. These require burning off the soot every so often. This is not a big deal, but if you are running a business with several employees that might be operating the tractor, the problem I would worry about is making sure everyone knows how to do the regeneration cycle and will pay attention to the directions. If they don't it can require a dealer service call. If there is just one operator, it is not such a problem, once he or she gets the hang of it, it's easy.

 

[virginiavenom]

Sheep farmer, I was told by my dealer I'm working with that recently kubota sent out a notice for a software update that puts regen into automatic. in other words, unless you cancel the regen, it will regen on it's own automatically without any input from the operator.

 

[sheepfarmer]

Sheep farmer, I was told by my dealer I'm working with that recently kubota sent out a notice for a software update that puts regen into automatic. in other words, unless you cancel the regen, it will regen on it's own automatically without any input from the operator.

That would be interesting. At the moment on mine (3560) you can put it in autoregen, but it won't do it unless the rpm/temp is adequate. If the work load is sufficient it does it by itself, otherwise the operator has to pay attention and see the light blinking and up the rpm accordingly. It would be easy for the computer to up the rpm itself, but I am not sure I'd like that. I have a screen that displays how full the dpf filter is at the moment, so around 98% I can plan my work load in advance. I don't know which models have this display, anyone with the 3301, 3309 series use it?