Clutch pivot ball assembly, ‘66 Barracuda

I agree with the Brewer's suggestion. And the long bolt, multiple washers and two nuts is all wrong. There's supposed to be a stud-like thingy on the lower end of the Z bar that you hook the adjusting rod over and that is held on by a clip. However, if you wanted to fix the clearance problem cheap, you could just substitute a shorter bolt (or shorten the bolt you have), eliminated the washers and then used the double nuts to hold it in place leaving enough of a gap that the adjusting rod can still move. That at least would keep the bolt end off the exhaust pipe.

Don't know if you now have a 10.5 inch clutch assembly instead of the original 9.5, but for a few $$$$ Brewer has a Z bar, a bellhousing mounting stud, and clutch fork setup specifically for a 10.5 inch clutch assembly in an early A body. That's what I'm now running in my 65 Barracuda. You can fabricate your own setup, and it can be made to work fine, but the Brewer setup, while not cheap, is an easier and more elegant solution (and in my case, offered more header clearance than the homemade linkage I had been running for decades).