This only happens when transmitting force in certain directions, namely +X to -X and +Z to -Z, an easy way to replicate this is to face north, place a weighted ejector in front of you with a creative motor on its right powering it, and a cogwheel or a shaft on its left. As soon as you trigger the ejector by placing something on it, it will think it's getting power from the cogwheel next to it and breaking the motor will result in an overstressed system.

This does not happen if you flip the build around like so:

I've used red wool to indicate configurations that cause this issue, and green wool for configurations that work as expected. No mods installed other than Create 0.3.1c.