Hi, not feeding anything, if the cross brace is not realy needed then why make a heavier one, if the cross brace was not functioning, say you had a load one side of the bucket or digging a root and the one side caught the solid lift then would the side trapped stay down and the other lift, the cylinders work on a teed pressure line so if you restrict one the other extends out fully, who knows what effect this would have on the pivot links, not winding anyone up, if I did sorry, if you have a cracking loader its simple, cut it out and its not cracked anymore, problem solved. Now, injury can happen on any equipment no matter how safe its made, I think Kioti have somewhere made a note that if any equipment upon inspection is not in good order then do not use it, obviously cracking is not included, if you flex anything long enough it will fail, lets hope its still under waranty