hmmmm, the old version didnt build the taskbar dinamically so the ampTimeLabelWidth var should be in plain sight - the only thing u might be doing wrong is having the bar on top and fiddling with bottom.rc, that would explain why your changes dont seem to affect the theme, other than that i dont have a clue :o

paste your config file here [http://www.rafb.net/paste/] and post the url here so i can get a look at your file ...