Problem with LOD and scaled meshes

I’m having some issues with the LOD and static meshes. The picture below illustrates the issue:

The static mesh is a section of pipe with has 3 different LODs. The pipes pictured are all the same model. The difference is that the top one is full scale on all axis, while the bottom two are scaled on the x-axis at 1/2 scale and 1/4 scale. Each LOD was assigned a different color to make the changeover easy to see. (Brown is LOD2.) As you can see, the scaling along the x-axis has caused the LOD to trip much earlier than intended which looks really bad. Is this a bug and is there a way to fix this short of disabling the LOD?