Don't just leave it disconnected, your passengers side header will be bearing all of the weight of the turbo if you do.
Here's a trick.
Loosen both bolts for the heat shield bracket at the block, located directly under the turbo. Follow the heat shield bracket down and you'll see them. One by itself up top and the one underneath it should have the battery ground wire attached to it. Loosening those two bolts, IIRC 15mm, will allow the bracket to move just enough so you can get both bolts into the dog ear bracket. Don't remove the bolts, just unloosen them so the bracket can move a tad. Next, the heat shield bracket only connects to the dog ear bracket one way as the wrong way won't allow the heat shield to bolt on properly. Now, once you have both bolts through both brackets, (dog ear and heat shield brackets) tighten them down. You might need to use lock washers or a larger flat washer. Now, tighten up the two bolts on the heat shield bracket to block nice and tight.
Over time and with heat cycles and age, the bracket can get tweaked, slightly warped. This causes the miss-alignment you're seeing.
But for the love of Pete's house cat, don't leave the heat shield bracket disconnected from the dog ear bracket on the turbo. As doing so will eventually lead to header cracks on the passengers side header from the excessive weight of the turbo on a pliable glowing hot header. Kinda a big deal IMO. And one last thing, if you have a TT chip and have previously set/altered the settings of the chip, make sure the settings are still saved. As jiggling the battery ground could disconnect power to the computer and cause it to loose your custom settings.
Hope this helps.
-Patrick-
