This is helpful so far ...

It has confirmed that in fact the "plate" that came out of this automatic truck is in fact the one in the bottom of the two pictures, ... only the one we took out is visibly torn.

I guess this is why none of the plates that have arrived look anything like the old, ... because the new parts are the right parts, and the old part is in fact the wrong one.

This would mean, ... that the automatic ran on the "plate" from the standard transmission, ... until it eventually broke, ... roughly 10,000 km after we bought it.

Hmmm ??? So the guy that owned it prior must have used the wrong parts to fix it initially?

Raider Enigma.