The reason I was curious about it is that it looks like I might be using a large spur gear on mine. I can forsee that plate getting in the way of the spur gear unless I add shims/washers to raise it. That led me to thinking about rather doing away with it, but I see now that I would have to replace both diff holders with solid alu diff holders to make up for the loss of support.

Do you think that is a bad idea and it'd be better to just shim the plate and raise it enough to not touch the spur?