thanks very much for the welcome and all the replies. I'm pretty certain my specs are correct - they came directly from the Specialized site. So I'll go ahead and get the Shimano replacement, I also have the required tools and been looking forward to using them all.

I'm not too surprised by that the bike has a couple of cheap TH parts - it is the absolute base model. So far though, the bike has been great and this is the first out of the ordinary issue.