Ahh, now I see the issue.
There is too much of a gap at the bottom.
If you look at your picture, where you put the text about the washers used to space out the mechanism.
Can you pull the metal (inner trunk metal) outwards a bit to correct the gap?
Or the plate of the catch is bent outwards. Will have to be bent back gently with some heat(cast metal is never easy to bend back, without heat)
Walter