Thanks for your input.   I must not understand how everything interacts as I thought moving it up would change the link stess and/or the proximity of the bars to the frame. 
Also...I'm nervous to add more washers (I already have several). How much tilt is safe?  And, along with the last question, I found that adding tilt really increased the stress...sometimes making the same number of links really hard to attach. 
Is there a point where you just shouldn't try to snap the links up?  Can you cheat and use the crank to hold weight while attaching the bars?