I went ahead and did an FEA stress analysis on the mirage pedal, and you guys are actually onto something.
Here is the stress plot:
What this is telling us is with 100 lbs force on the pedal, the max stress is about 44,000psi around the area where the pedals seem to always break. This is all well and fine but the yield strength of the aluminum is only 31,000 psi. I did my analysis using aircraft grade aluminum (the really good stuff), so actual results will probably be less ( I don't know the actual grade they are using).
This doesn't mean that it will break at 100 lbs force, what it means is each time you hit 100 lbs force, the metal gets a little weaker and yields just a little (metal fatigue), and eventually just breaks and falls off. You can do this at home folks, take a piece of 1/8 aluminum and bend it back and forth 10 or 20 times, it keeps getting easier, then all of a sudden after so many flex's it just breaks, that's just the way aluminum is, sorry to burst everyone bubble about the strength of aluminum....
What this means is all of our mirage drives are ticking time bombs. I know in my case I'm going to take mine apart and drop in a couple 1/8" x 1/2"x2" pieces of aluminum, I will pack some paper into one end, grease up the pin (the pin used for setting the mirage pedals), then pour in epoxy over the 2 pieces of aluminum (one on each side of that mirage setting pin), basically filling the inside around the problem area. This should add enough strength to the problem area to eliminate the fatigue problem. I imagine just a solid slug of epoxy (without the aluminum strips) will probably also work, we only need to distribute the load to a wider area. Basically anything in there to strengthen the weak area will work.
Hope this helps
Bob