If the shock cradle moves sufficiently on the standard or later revised cable, then the cable connector usually simply pulls off the motherboard header if it's not glued. I had a number of repairs do this due to FedEx bouncing the boxes rather hard on the way back to customer. This then meant a return I had to bear the cost of, which was not cheap when it happened about 10 times in a row. Bang goes any profit - in fact I ended out of pocket and FedEx will not discuss compensation.

If the cable connector is glued onto the IDE header on the board, then all that happens is that the cradle swings by pivoting around on the too-short cable, and the cradle end nearest the buttons hits the back of the display board, where it can leave a mark. It does not cut tracks or cause any damage. However, it's not intended to do this: the correct fix will be to have second revision of the cable done with an extra 8 mm between the first connector and the motherboard connector, which allows the correct travel of the cradle. Since this will mean significant outlay on my part when this batch runs out - well, don't hold your breath.

The IDE header on the board does NOT pull off the PCB: let me repeat that, it DOES NOT PULL OFF the board when the cable gets stressed. The famous "IDE header problem" is being blown out of proportion completely: it is a manufacturing fault in the later batch of 2A/Rio car players. It is relatively unlikely that people will have this problem. I do automatically re-solder the header regardless of model variant just to be sure, but the actual number of players I have had to repair for it can be counted on the fingers of two hands (out of a couple of hundred different repairs). The most recent ones were Cristian's player last year at the meet, and Phil's player this year at the meet.

For the header to be pulled away from the main board PCB with sufficient force to separate the soldering (highly unlikely unless the joints were already VERY bad) you would more likely rip the tracks off the main board, hence totally destroying the PCB and finishing your player off permanently. This sort of force could only result from dropping the player from about 20m onto concrete, and I suspect that in that situation, the IDE header problem would then be the least of your worries