Air Cleaner Clearance Issue with Export Brace and Maybe the Hood

Well, warm weather is starting to approach here in Northwestern PA and I am getting anxious to finally get my '65 on the road. After all, it has only been over a decade since this project began!

My uncle got the motor dropped into the car late last week and got everything pretty much wired up. Today was the first day that I got to stop by the garage and take a look. While the fenders and hood haven't been installed yet (coming this week), I am concerned that the hood will not clear the front of the air cleaner.

My second concern was that the export brace would not fit due to the air cleaner. We mocked up the export brace and sure enough the rear of the air cleaner sits too high and hits the export brace.

After looking over everything, we have come up with a solution that may work. Looking at the last image, we have already trimmed down the adapter (#1 in the pic) that sits on the carb so there isn't much we can do there. However, there is about a 1/4" to 1/2" lip on the bottom portion of the air cleaner (#2 in the pic) that sits onto that adapter. We may be able to grand down that lip so that the air cleaner sits a bit lower on top of the carb.

Grinding down that lip probably still won't give me enough room to have the export brace clear the air cleaner. The only other thing thing that I think we could do is to put a shim between the cowl lip and the export brace. However, I don't think that this would look very good.

Here is a bit more infomation on my setup:

- 347 stroker
- Edelbrock Intake
- Edelbrock 600 cfm carb
- Ron Morris Adjustable Motor Mounts
- Tremec TKO 5-speed Transmission

Any suggestions on how to get this all to fit?

The transmission is in the car. The tranny is a Tremec TKO 5-speed. The transmission actually fits very well in the car the the shifter is mounted dead center to the factory hole in the floor.

Looking at the second picture that 2+2GT posted, I don't believe that my air cleaner sits that high. However, it seems that the back of my air cleaner sits closer to the cowl lip then the one in the picture.

I guess that I will have to wait and see until we get the hood on the car to see how much clearance there is with the air cleaner, if any at all. If there is some room then we may be able to raise the air cleaner up some to clear the export brace.