For a number of years, we've given the advice that you should remove this loader from the tractor when you go to cut your grass, that's for several reasons. When you have a tractor you're driving around on your lawn, the more weight that you've got on that tractor, the more ruts you're going to leave in the lawn, the more you're going to compact the grass, none of which are good things. It's also good for your tractor's tires. If you need to cut your grass in four-wheel drive, your four-wheel drive is going to have a lead on those front tires. The transmission of your tractor is actually set up that the front tires spin a little bit faster than what the back tires do. That lead causes those tires to wear a little bit more quickly in the front than the ones in the back. And if you have all the additional weight from this loader sitting on top of those tires while you're making all of those turns back and forth in your lawn, you're also wearing down the tread in your front tires more than what's necessary, right? If you take that loader off, you got a lot less weight pushing down on there.
Given that advice for years, but now we actually have the tools to test this a little bit. So we're going to take the tractor here and pull up on this set of scales, we're going to measure the amount of weight that we have sitting on top of these front tires, and then we're going to go through and remove the bucket from the loader and also the loader from the tractor and see the impact on the weight on those front tires. It's going to be an interesting test. Check it out here. Anytime we go through and do measurements on loaders and we have actual tools to check this stuff out, it's always interesting to see the results, they're often not what you think because the geometries that are happening on a loader impact the results in interesting ways.
So we're going to start here in kind of getting our reference point. So going to start the tractor up here, pull up onto the scales, and get a measurement. So at this point right here, this is telling me we have 1,450 pounds sitting on top of that combination of front tires. That's a significant amount of weight, especially when you go through and think about how small the contact patch is underneath those tires, right? Your PSI, your pressure on the ground is surprisingly high. So now we're going to pop the bucket off of the loader. Now, I know many, many people who choose to mow by simply taking the loader bucket off, right? It shortens this thing up by about a good 18 inches or so, and the skid steer coupler is a piece of cake to operate and take on and off. So we'll see how much impact this actually has on our weight measurement.
So without our bucket on here, we're going to pull back up onto our scales again and see what the impact is of removing that bucket. Now we were at 1,450 pounds before, and if I look here now, sitting on top of the scales, I'm riding right about 1,150 pounds so by removing that bucket we've removed 300 pounds from sitting on top of the tires. Now, the interesting thing about this is that that bucket doesn't weigh 300 pounds, it's about 150. You see here the implications, the impact of that load sitting way out beyond the front tires, it pulls the weight of that tractor forward and has a greater impact on the weight that's actually sitting on top of the tires than the weight of the bucket itself so it has that amplifying factor by being further away from the tractor. So yeah, you're actually, by removing the bucket, you're doing quite a bit of good, right? You've removed nearly 25% or so from the weight that's sitting on top of the tires, but I suspect that removing the entire loader is going to do a lot more good.
If I pull back up onto my scales here without that loader... I now have a meager 780 pounds sitting on top of those front tires. So it's interesting when we actually start putting tested numbers to advice, right? This is actually a greater difference than what I was expecting to see, you have basically half the weight sitting on front of these front tires by taking the time to remove that loader. And that difference of basically 700 pounds or so is more or less double the difference of what this loader actually weighs, right? That's that amplifying effect of so much of the mass and the weight of this loader hanging out in front of the tractor, right? It's pulling weight from the rear of the machine and kind of centering it over top of that front axle.
And with all that weight on that front axle, on the small contact patch of those front tires, what are you doing? You're rutting things up, you're wearing your tires quicker than what you need to, you're compacting your lawn more than what's necessary. So I give the advice here, right? Take the time to pause before you go out and mow that grass, remove the loader from the tractor, you're going to be happy for it in the long run.
Today, I'm going to show you how to get your tractor unstuck from the mud using your load or there's a little technique that you can do to help get that tractor out on your own, without needing another machine in order to tow you out
Neil from Messick's here, out today with the Kubota L3902. This is a really important tractor, Kubota's introduction of an updated Standard L. This series machine is actually the top selling compact tractor in the United States, it is one of the most popular models in the industry. And Kubota has done a lot of things to this tractor that I think are really nice improvements. So we're going to take some time today, walk around the L3902, show you a couple of things that they've changed and updated. If you're the owner of the prior model, I've got a couple of tips for you, on here are some of the things you might be able to peel off of this tractor and put onto your older machine if you think that's worth looking at. So come along with me here today, we're going to walk around this new model.
There are four tractors in the Standard L family. Now, prior to these two new ones, you would've had the L2501, 3301, 3901 and 4701. What's being updated here for 2022 is only the 33, now the 3302 and the 39, going to a 3902. Those numbers mean things, when we look at Kubota model numbers, those first two digits are going to be the engine horsepower, the second two are a series identifier. So those are all being incremented. So we now have new 33 and 39 horsepower tractors in the Standard L family. I would guess, probably safe to assume that the other models will probably be addressed in the next model iteration. You're going to notice a small model number change on the loader as well, this is an LA526, the prior model was an LA525. This loader is backward compatible to the prior model. So if you have an older tractor that does not have a loader on it, the LA526 will go back to your older machine as well. Couple of small improvements on it that we're going to point out to you here as well.
