Z Bar Ballstud Bellhousing Bracket Seems Wrong.

Matt, I had a somewhat similar problem with my car. It is a 340 Duster that originally came with a 727 automatic. Somewhere along the line somebody swapped a 318/904 combination into the car. They used the original z-bar but it did not reach all of the way to the ball crank on the transmission. So they got a piece of angle iron and made their own. This caused the shift lever on the column to not line up correctly to the indicated gear on the selector.
I had to locate and buy a z-bar and ball crank for the 904 a body application. Got them from a FABO member.
The z-bar and ball crank are different for the 340/727 combination. I imagine that you should look for a z-bar and ball crank for your engine and transmission combination for an a body.
Good luck.