Unknown Brackets on Beater Box

At some stage in the past someone has screwed three L shaped brackets to the bottom of the flying shuttle beater box at each end so that one arm of the bracket sticks up vertically in front of the box with gap between the bracket and the front of the box of about half an inch. I presume that they are later aditions as I can see no reference to them in the Leclerc documentation.
They look as if they are designed to hold something that slots into the gap. I don't want to remove them if they could prove useful.

Flying shuttle on Nilart and not enough heddles on Ashford

Whilst cleaning my Nilart I decided to fit the flying shuttle beater. The fitting was no problem, but oh my gosh, do those shuttles go! The second picture shows the barricades of pillows that I had to put in place to catch the damn thing before it wreaked total havoc. Once I realised that the problem was that the cord was too loose and was deflecting the shuttle order was restored.

I was very tempted to put on a warp straight away so I could start using it but I was very good and stuck to my plans to work on the stitched double weave sampler.

 Before I do anything else I have to put on some more heddles; not my favourite task. I do feel that the manufacturers could have supplied just a few more to start off with. The draft that I am using has one layer threaded on shafts 7 and 8 whilst the other layer is spread between shafts 1 to 6, hence the discrepancy in heddle numbers. The same problem would have arisen if I had decided to do some Huck.