MX 5200. 92 hours. Everything has been working fine and functionally no issues. 5 regens so far and the last one just happened. I think I average about 15 to 20 hours between. I have a horse farm and drive manuer from the barn every day....which in the winter time is really not ideal for a dpf machine. When it's cold I preheat for ten minutes at 1350 rims as per the manual....then how many rpms are really needed to haul my 1 or 1.5 buckets of manuer to a compost pile 150 yards away.....I'm either wasting gas at 1800 or 2000 rpms or clogging the dpf at 1350. My other use lately has been clearing a few acres of land from woods....making pasture. For that I keep it between 1800 to 2000 rpms with a lot of stopping and restarting and switching between the bucket to push small trees down and the forks to carry everything away. I try not to leave the machine idle and keep the rpms high when in use.
BUt mentally it does kind of suck often trying to find the line between knowing your using more gas than you need to and trying not to plug your dpf all the time. There are other situations I don't like either. I hate the idea of stopping a regen cycle mid way. So if one pops on I like to see it through. Twice now while loading loggs onto trailers this has created small issues. One time just as I finished loading my cousins trailer the dpf needed clearing. I wanted to show him something else on the property so instead of shutting it down mid cycle I left it run and we went for a walk. Well between conversation and important discussion it took a good half hour before I made it back to the machine which was running about 2000 rpms. I kept thinking as I'd hear the tractor run ,"what a huge waste of gas and machine wear". I didn't see that regen light pop on so for all I know it could have been almost done cycling when I got off the tractor...then another pointless how many minutes of high rpm run time? Another situation very similar to that happened when I finished loading another trailer and looked down before shut-off and noticed the light on. I needed to talk to the trailer driver and it would have been nice shutting the machine off. Instead I climbed off the machine leaving the engine screaming at 2k. Explained why I left it running...dang epa...then we had to shout over the engine noise to finish our conversation about what needed done.
I've only had the machine for about 3 or 4 months but these are my experiences so far. 3 out of 5 regens have come at bad times. And I'm often making compromises between wasting gas and worrying about the dpf...etc. don't get me wrong I love the tractor and am awed by its capabilities...but the people pretending there are no problems or compromises at all must be drinking hard coolaid or they just haven't experienced them yet. I find myself, even though these issues aren't big ones they are small inconveniences, wishing I would have bought a few years ago.
