What does this button do? Regen Inhibit

Neil from Messick's here to talk today about one weird feature on your tractor's emission system. There's a button on your dash that very few people really understand its function, and I actually used it for the very first time last week. Today we're going to walk around, and we're going to talk about the regen inhibit button on your tractor.
The function that we're talking about here today is called regen inhibit. This is going to be found on most but not all tractors. Every machine made since 2013 that's over 26 horsepower, has to have a system on it to address soot. That's done with two different systems. One is called a diesel oxidation catalyst which is, effectively, always burning that soot off while it's running, or a diesel particulate filter.
The filter captures the soot and then runs through an easy bake oven cycle where it burns the soot off inside of that container. It does it about every 20 to 50 hours or so depending on how hot and clean your exhaust has been running. That's the version that we're talking about here today. That represents probably about 80% of the machines that have been built over 26 horsepower since 2013.
Now, we've done a number of different videos talking about how all of these systems work, but we generally glance pretty quickly over top of the regen inhibit button, and I used it for the very first time actually while filming a video last week. When your tractor goes through a regen cycle, you usually are going to be out operating your machine, and you're going to start to see some lights blinking on the dash. Usually with icons that look like a little poof of smoke with an up arrow.
That's telling you in order to increase the engine RPMs on your machines so that your DPF gets hot enough to go through a burn cycle. It will do that on most machines on its own without any intervention from you. You just simply go about continuing to do your work. I found myself in a unique situation, though, the other day, while I was out working in my yard, I was running an implement on my three-point hitch, specifically a fertilizer spreader, and I did not want to increase my engine RPMs.
Doing so was detrimental to the work that I was doing. If I had to speed that up, I would be running the spinner faster, or my spreader. I would pulverize all the fertilizer that's coming out of it. I would spread it much wider than what I intended to, so at that moment, the tractor was calling for me to increase my engine RPMs, but I didn't want to. That was the perfect application, the perfect time, to use that regen inhibit switch.
That switch on most tractors is going to look like that little poof of air but with the 'no' slash through it, and you're simply telling your tractor, no, at this point, I'm not in a situation that I want to go through that regen. The other time that I would recommend using that would be if you're transporting back to your barn, back to your garage, to park your tractor and be done for the day, if your tractor starts to call for that regen, don't start it, right, because it can take 10, 20 minutes or so in order to complete. Simply hitting that inhibit button will keep the regen process from starting.
Now, once you've pushed that button, your tractor's not going to go into a burn cycle, right, and you have a DPF sitting on there with a pretty heavy soot load in it, right, to the point that the tractor is calling for that to be cleaned out. I can't tell you exactly how long it's okay in order to run your machine with the regen inhibit button on, but I think it's fairly safe to say it's going to be a number of hours.
This isn't anything that you need to press that button and worry in the next 15 minutes, you got to get this thing done, but you're going to buy yourself time to be able to go out and complete whatever work that it is that you're doing before allowing your machine to go through the regen cycle. Pressing the button again is going to cancel it. If you then push your RPMs back up again, your machine's going to build that heat.
It will start the regen cycle on its own while you are working or, if you choose to, you could also park your tractor and press the parked regen button in order to manually force the regen process to happen. Either one of those is perfectly fine. Interesting conversation. We talked so much about emission systems and how they work. Knowing the education on how these systems are designed and function properly is really important to them working well for you, but this is an often overlooked button, right?
Very good reasons to use it. You should know its function and its purpose when it comes time, because you'll be grateful for it in the end. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help, or if you have parts or service needs for a machine you've already got, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.