We just had a good discussion about this here:
http://www.thorforums.com/forums/f8/...ion-11004.html
I just had the same thing happen on me. The winds here in Albequerque are bananas today. The door blew open and pulled the strut right off the ball and now my ball is bent at a 45 degree angle. The struts fits back on the ball, just need to slide the clip back down.