Buying Advice Kubota L series 3800 v 3901

[Middletown]

Greetings to all,

As my first post I wanted to say "howdy" , thank you for your time in reading my post and ask the community their .02C

I own a small (18ac) hilly property in Western VA. I plan on retiring here, ive worked land up til now with rentals, good neighbors and an over worked late 90s ATV. i have been saving for a couple years to purchase a tractor outright to work the land.
Mostly hardwoods with about 7 ac of flat open tillable land. I plan for raising feed grasses etc and the tractor as mainly brush work, heavy work ie moving logs, grading the gravel etc... basic rural homeowner stuff.
my neighbor, whose opinion i value greatly, lives and breathes Kubota. "Green is for grass not paint" he will tell you. either way, his kubota's speak to his trust in the brand, they are always working. year round. without fail.

i put my heart and goal on the L3800HST with a package deal that suits my needs with an outfit that i am sure most have seen along coastal SC. I plan on moving forward in Aug with a purchase, THEN i discovered just yesterday, that the L3800 is being replaced by the L3901. At a cost increase of almost 3K for the tractor and 5K for the package deal i am planning on. yes i know this is old news to most of you, but now from what i can understand, the ONLY thing differing between the models is a California emissions certificate on the engine?
Did i miss anything? are there more features that are significant to the user to justify this increase?
Should i run out and grab a L3800 while i can?
someone help me stay with kubota or tell me of a viable alternative with another manufacture.
if that is the only item is a "politically correct" engine, im looking elsewhere for my tractor.

Thanks for any input from your experiences.

 

[Tomtint]

I would look for a tractor without all the garbage the EPA has mandated now. It will ..at some point need maintence and replacement parts that will just cause you down time and cost you money. It stands to reason that there will be gremlins in the new systems for years. I would wait until they are well field tested and the needed modifications are made.

 

[ultrarunner]

It's been a week since we took Delivery or our "New" L3800 and purposely avoided the newer model.

We bought from local Kobota Dealer... could not find a new one... did find a harvest return with 90 hours on it... not a scratch... so far so good.

My brother was thinking of a "B", thought the "L" too big and now says he's very happy he went with the 3800L

 

[k0ua]

Tier 4 final emissions rules have hit all tractors over 26 HP. Nothing unique to Calif. or Kubota there. There is nothing wrong with Kubota, I have owned two of them, but there is nothing magical either, many brands and colors offer a good value.

I still have an "orange" tractor made by Kioti. (Daedong of Korea). To answer you direct question about added value with the L3901 vs. the L3800, you will have less emissions with the L3901, so less diesel stink which may or may not matter to you. One other thing to consider is the jerky 3 point hitch issue. The jury is not totally in yet on the L3901, but first reports are that the L3901 does not have this problem.

You can do your own research on the jerky 3pt. hitch, there are thousands of post's here on this and many you-tube videos etc. and I will let you draw your own conclusions. It is one(not the only one) of the reasons I now own a Kioti instead of my last tractor a 2010 L3400hst. Many of us with the slightly older versions of the standard L series tractors had hoped the newer L3200 and L3800 would have fixed this annoying problem but were disappointed when the model change did not.

Again while we don't know for sure, at least first reports are that the newest models like the L3901 have resolved this.

 

[Middletown]

Thank you all very much.
Some good information here!
I was not aware of the 3 pt hitch issue either, this is very helpful.

 

[s219]

If the price increase is an obstacle, by all means grab a remaining 3800 while you can. People have been scrambling for the older models for some months now.

 

[Fallon]

The only guaranteed differences is insignificant cosmetic issues & the spendy emissions stuff. The 01 series may have the jerky 3pt fixed, but not all of the old model had issues. Check out how smooth the 3pt is when lifting small distances with an implement on.

 

[k0ua]

Here is what a really bad example of the Kubota Standard L series jerky 3pt hitch looks like. Note he is attempting to raise the hitch slowly like you would to "feather" a box blade or in this example of raising something slowly with a boom pole. This is what mine looked like.. Your milage may vary.

Kubota L3700SU Jerky 3pt Hitch - YouTube

 

[k0ua]

Here is the famous "Jeffs kubota 3pt repair".. This member added some parts to the 3pt valve. It is documented in a thread on this forum some time back.. Here is the "after" video.

Kubota L3400 - 3PH Action @ 2000 RPM - YouTube

 

[k0ua]

Here is Chilly807's "before video"..

Kubota L3400 3 point hitch - YouTube

Here is Chilly807's "after video"..

Kubota L3400 with rear blade after 3 point valve adjustment - YouTube

too bad there were other side effects introduced by this adjustment. Here is his own words:

This was with the PCV set to workshop manual specs. Although the lift action is butter smooth, there were unexpected side effects. The hitch would settle about an inch or so whenever the engine was shut down, and also when the FEL hydraulics were used or the rear remote. When the FEL valve returned to center and hydraulic flow was returned to normal the hitch would snap back into the previous position. In my opinion this wasn't acceptable so I re-set the valve to the original settings