What's wrong with my linkage?

[Fred S]

My car came like this. I have a V shaped throttle rod, located under the starter rod. Facing the firewall, the steering column was also rotated slightly to the left.

I bought a 6" throttle rod, installed it, and rotated the steering column to the center. Then the left end of the throttle rod hit the block at about half throttle. And I discovered someone removed a chunk of the distributor rod, and with the column centered, the distributor rod is too short for full retard. Since I can't retard the distributor fully, I put the V shaped throttle rod back in, and rotated the steering column back to the left, like it was.

So I also need a full length distributor rod, but I can't figure out what is wrong with the linkage, causing a normal straight throttle rod to hit the engine with the column centered.