Hey, tomtomtom - I answered you yesterday, after which the thread vanished. Like Duragrouch, I pointed out that failure happened where a piece designed to operate as a strut (axial load) was being loaded as a beam (from the side) - and had a big hole in it. What I pointed out was that turning the strut upside down - single hole at the top - would have eliminated the weak point - putting solid strut at the point of lateral load. So for one thing it would be good to advise people with the rack whose struts haven't failed yet to do that (and cut off the lower end beyond the hole they're actually using, if it interferes with anything).

For you: although the broken struts & the replacements you've found are both too short to use with your current panniers, if you bolt them together you can make a long-enough strut with no hole at the danger point - and avoid the need for new bags.

Here's the URL of the mysteriously vanished thread: https://www.bikeforums.net/folding-b...argo-rack.html

Thread # 1311831, as I found from browser history. When I clicked that link after the thread disappeared, I got an "invalid thread" message, and the URL in my browser address bar changed the "folding-bikes" to "trash".