[masraum]

Interesting question. I'm watching with interest.

This does seem like one of those things where a weak spot has been engineered into the system to keep from making a failure more expensive and catastrophic. It's kind of like the convertible top tie-rods that have plastic tie-rod ends. If something happens, the plastic cap breaks. A lot of folks on the Internet are selling metal tie-rod ends. I think I read an article by Wayne where he replaced the motor and several other pieces of the top mechanism that were bent and bad. Maybe a plastic part in the middle isn't such a bad thing.