STEERING COLUMN DILEMMA

This duster im working on for a guy is almost done. He took the steering column home and painted it. When he took it off he took it apart where those 2 little square pieces go into the coupler that goes onto the steering box. Now when he brought it back we put the column through the fire wall and tried to put it back together no go. So i took the coupler off the steering box and put it together out of the car. So now we put it through the fire wall again and i tried to put the coupler on the splines on the steering box and its way to short. It has about an 1/2 inch before it even touches the first set of splines. What am i missing ? Hope i explained this ok. Thanks