I have seen a number of cracked and broken stems of various brands.There is always a lot of talk about the so called Ava death stems. Considering the frequency that these supposedly fail you would think there would be a lot of pictures,but i seldom see any,so I tend to be a bit skeptical. As a matter of fact there seems to be little agreement on which models are the death stems.However here are a few pics of an Ava stem that has a scary looking crack.This style which has the vertical bolt is the style which i tend to be wary of.I do not know if this style is the supposed death stem.