To get mine to work on 3.5.2 I did the above steps and also removed:
<td class="alt1">$forum[threadcount]</td>
<td class="alt2">$forum[replycount]</td>
from forumhome_forumbit_level1_post and forumhome_forumbit_level2_post.
It also seemed to align them all up for me. I also skipped the original steps in forumhome_forumbit_level1_post and forumhome_forumbit_level2_post.
Here you can see a demo
http://www.muzikingz.com/forum