Thanks a bunch BookBoy - very interesting read. They also give their relative experience in the reviews as well. Seems odd that some folks have success and others total failure, even at similar experience levels. Could point to some quality control issues or similar issues ...or not.

At any rate, after reading all that I played around with the retracts a bunch tonight - they now have many 100's of cycles (so far trouble free) It would seem to me that unless the ball link pops off they shouldn't collapse. In fact even if the ball link does pop off, they should only rotate because the locking mechanism is in the slide - however rotating might be worse than collapsing[X(] I am thinking about some form of safety wire on the ball links to limit their outward movement - a kind of safety chain to keep them attached. We'll see.