Originally Posted by Al1943
It sounds to me as if someone added the spacers because the chain was dragging on the side of the big ring when the inner ring was installed backwards causing the spacing to be too close.
You got that reversed. The one assembled correctly (and apparently by Shimano) is the one with the spacers. Besides, the way the cogs are offset, it looks as if flipping the inner ring
increases teh spacing.
Both show chain scarring on the inside of the big ring, though. Is that abnormal?
But it doesn't sound like something Shimano would do intentionally.
As I say, the bike was newly assembled from an OEM kit. The builder didn't care enough to get the crank arm lengths right, so I seriously doubt he took the trouble to rebuild the crankset.