I've had my R4047H for a bit over a year, and I've put about 175 hours on it....zero problems. As far as parts availability, I bounced my finish mower off a stump, breaking one of the 3pt stabilizer arms, and was able to get one in two days from the local Case/IH dealer by telling them I needed the same part for a Farmall 50B (same machine). A while later I was loading fill from a pile and found a large rock with one edge of the bucket...which caused a slight bend in the bracket on that side (everything still worked)...they are intentionally the weak link so you don't break something important. This time I decided to try one of the online suppliers, and had the correct part in 3-4 days. The only time I got worried was the first big cold snap after I got it, and I hadn't even looked at the manual for the cold start procedure (really it's just to put the throttle at about 1/3 rather than idle)....it makes a difference!
Is it perfect? No, I'd change two things, but they're not deal-killers for me. I sometimes wish the loader had 10-12" more lift height. It only comes up when I load my neighbors small dump truck, or the two times I loaded 30yd rolloff dumpsters, so it's not a huge deal. I can still load either, but it slows me down a bit. The other thing is I'd like a little more room between the left side brake pedals and the fender to make getting on/off easier. I don't even think about it now, but it would be a nice change.
LS is building compact tractors for New Holland, and Case, so that makes three different dealers you can get most parts from. NH/Case use their own loader, so that means you'd need to get loader parts from an LS dealer, or online supplier, but that doesn't seem to be a big challenge right now. My loader parts were drop shipped from the LS warehouse in NC, so it was pretty seamless.
Going off memory, LS has been selling under their own name since 2009, and started out as a division of Hyundai in 1975. As part of the LG family of companies, they have the backing of annual revenue that's essentially the same as John Deere. Many people think that because of that they're intentionally working on much smaller profit margins to gain market share, and then eventually crank up prices, and move into more sophisticated products. That's a similar model to what Hyundai did....start out with the less expensive machines, and now you can buy a $75K car from them. They're certainly expanding both here, and in the rest of the world....they opened a factory in China to supply machines there, and most recently one in Brazil to serve the South American market. I don't think we'd see that from a company that won't be around for a long time.
