In an earlier post, I made mention of a KK mower my employer bought that had cracked a couple welds and wadded up the hitch. It did EXACTLY the same thing as your picture, only bent a little more. When that happened, we loaded it up and took it back to where it was bought. They gave us an exchange, without question, contrary to the normal practice of this particular store when dealing with returned merchandise (leading us to believe this sort of thing isn't all that UNcommon with KK) While looking at the "new ones" while my boss was handling the paperwork, I couldn't help but notice how the bar stock that makes up the upper "mast" of the 3-point was different from mower to mower. Almost like they were "free-handed" when bending them to shape. Most of the breaks (angles) in the bar stock was not straight (90 degrees to the run of the bar)
Without a doubt, KK uses the minimal amount of iron in their products. They are LIGHT duty and barely that at times. Use inadaquate material to build something in a less than precise manner, and you have a weak sister.
IF....if you can get it exchanged for another mower OR get replacement parts, and it should do the same thing again, I'd look at the geometry of the 3-point hitch also. Is the upper link reasonably close to parallel to the lower links? Or is it at a steep angle, higher towards the mower end? That would put a great bit of downward load as well as the "normal" load pulling forward towards the tractor, on the now bent bar stock. (Some tractors have multiple attaching points for the top link. It MAY be a case where you need to run the top link in the highest possible position to achieve the correct hitch geometry)
