Here's 2 cents from the cheap seats, lol. The contact between the limbs and the pads at rest is moot, imho. The diss bars and pads come into effect when you fire the bow and the limbs spring forward quite a bit from their position at rest. Proof of this is string damage from too low of a brace height. Regardless of the amt of contact at rest, they have full contact and do their job during the firing sequence. According to a post from a guy that works at the factory on the Excal site, the older screws had alot of threads but the newer ones are shoulder bolt type and just get tightened up.