[TJThunder66]

So, I had the dreaded failure of the single master and luckily the car did not hit anything by the time I got it to stop. Since then, it's been in the garage sitting. I opted to move to the dual master, but upon purchasing the dual master, found it was not clearing the strut brace because the stock 10" midland booster is just too big. So, I decided to go with the shorter Bendix style 6.5" from PartsGeek.com:

1966 Ford Thunderbird Centric Brake Booster
Centric 160.80055

I got the old booster out today (what a PITA). I did not disconnect the bracket from the firewall, simply took off the 4 bolts, pulled the pin, and out it came. Next, I start putting the new one in, only to find that rod section on the back end of the new booster is not clearing the brackets, so I can't bolt it back in. The center part where the rubber cover is, seems to be too wide to fit in between the brackets. I managed to either get the top & bottom right bolted, but the left side end up too far off, or I get just the tops bolted on and the bottoms are off. I'm worried about snapping the bolts trying to bend it all into fitting.

What am I missing... it isn't supposed to be this hard?!

Should I just start over, and disconnect the bracket from the firewall, put it all back together and then try to bolt it back up to the firewall? Kinda lost, and extremely annoyed at my own ignorance here.

Thanks for any help.

'66 Flair Bird btw.