The support you are thinking of is made by Stewart Steel in Canada and our distributor is Maurer out of Spencer, Iowa. We have put alot of these on after replacing the outer half of the tube.
The auger tube buckles outward of where the truss rod attaches. You could go ahead and install the sleeve on a buckled tube. You would not be out anything if it did not help as it is not that difficult to install. Case also came with a wider band that is supposed to help. We have some of them out and keeping an eye on them to see if they do the job.
NO but weve had it happen with 3 combnies...all recent... Must have gotton some weak metal somehow or other The new combine for 05's not doing it so hopefully they made a change.. I think the dealer is very tired of that problem too lol