Has Yakima changed the design of their Q towers in the last couple of
years? I have some Q towers I bought in about 1997-1998. I recently
bought their "Landing Pad 6" setup, for permanent installation to a
vehicle roof, but the two pieces don't seem to be designed to work
together properly.

Here's a photo of what I'm trying to put together:

http://users3.ev1.net/~elambeth/Untitled-1.JPG

To me it looks pretty obvious that these pieces are just the wrong
dimensions to fit together, but maybe I'm just clueless... The
extremely unhelpful instructions simply say "insert Q tower into
landing pad." Anyone got a suggestion?

I am pretty frustrated with this... all I can figre out is that at
some point they changed the tower design so things don't fit together
anymore with older models. Anyone know if this is the case??

I would really appreciate some help on this.