Good job on the repair. Did you actually work the grapple while it was half disconnected (certainly without you noticing) or it was bent by the weight of the grapple alone?
When working the grapple, my eyes are almost always on the grapple itself, so I'm pretty sure I noticed it right away, although it
was buried in brush at the time. The jaw was open and I was running slowly forward with the tines in the ground, uprooting privet scrub next to a large pine stump. I made contact with an underground root of the pine, which has happened before, so I backed up, raised the tines a bit and pushed forward again.
I cleared the root, but I sensed something wasn't right, so I raised the grapple a foot or so and backed up to clear the wad of brush I was collecting. It was then when I noticed the detachment. I immediately shut down and went to check out the situation.
The QA plates were permanently offset, and no amount of fiddling would allow me to reconnect to the grapple, so I'm pretty sure the damage was already done. I was a mile from home, so I curled it up and headed that way -- slooooowly. The last thing I wanted was to have the thing come completely off on the road, and curling it seemed to be the best way to prevent that.
So the answer to your question is I
think the damage occurred while operating. It was VERY noticeable to the eye, so I'm reasonably sure I didn't operate that way for long. But certainly the drive home with it attached to only one side didn't help matters either. However, at that point I was really, really happy just to get back home without leaving a grapple on its side or upside down in the roadway.
Jay