[Putter]

It took about an hour. Unattached it from the dash, loosened the clamp on the firewall, slid it down to desired length...and marked it.
Then cut a new slot in the column under the dash.
Bolted it all back up and gave it a "belly-clearance test".
It passed with flying colors.

Here is a pic of the new slot. (Since this was a van column, it came with two slots originally, so we simply elongated the top one. Had it been a truck column, we would have just made a second slot alltogether).
If you look closely, the slot that is 1/2 in the shadow was being used in the original position. The new position hit just below the upper slot, so we just made it longer.