Can anybody shed some light on the "spacer" plates that are in some hitch photos and absent in others?

I am talking about the pentagon shaped plates shown the the following photo (stealing photo from previous post):


I just bought a set off a junked X5. My hitch production date is 22/03, much later than the hitch pictured above that has a date of 50/00. All the parts I have look like this from the ECS website:


Should I assume that the spacers aren't included in the later trailer kits? And that the lack of a spacer will not lower my tongue limit? I'm just thinking that the older kits have 1/4" thicker metal braced against the sheet metal, so it should be stronger than without.

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