I recently purchased a CForce 400 and had a snow plow installed. These are the pins the dealership used to mount the plow. No issues with them so far.
I believe that nearly every MFR will use parts in their product that cost as low as possible. An example are tires that come on new trucks. The tires are "marginal OK" in non-severe use and manage to keep the wheels off the pavement. Beyond that, if you go out in boonies or a lot of snow, they are nearly worthless. My new $48K truck comes that way. You have to get into "wild packages" to get any decent tires, so I'll just wear these original ones down and get much better tires from after-market tire places.
Trucks, cars, snowplow mfrs, even CFMoto; some do it more than others. Example CFMoto skid plates are plastic. The old Suz KQuad had steel skid plates. It is just what is done these days. I am OK with plastic because it slides nice on snow. In summer I will have to be more careful.
I think the same is true for these pins. It takes a lot less effort to bend a 1/4" pin than a 3/8" Grade 10 pin. Sure the 1/4" pin will work for some time (like 10 minutes after warranty expires -
, but a better pin is just better.
When plowing snow at lets say a good pace, and you push into a big pile of snow that Does Not Move, that is a lot of stress on the pins and mounting platform. My pins go through 4 pieces of 3/16" steel, 2 per pin, and everything is beefy.
Whatever, just watch your pins. JMO
YMMV