Rich: You do not have to cut the hood if you do not want to, it will still fit. As a suggestion, I would trim the foam some around the hood brace just to keep it even. The foam cuts fairly even with just scissors. Now if you put the pad on under the upper pan, you may not even want to cut the foam. The pad will help space the upper pan lower.
Here are cleaner copies of the instructions if you want them:
The vent tube is a little more complicated if you are trying to duplicate a 67 RA Cal. car. The first RA carb tubs were stamped without the vent tube hole. Pontiac either forgot that Cal. required a closed crankcase vent system or did not think any would be sold there.
So they started stamping the hole in all the bottom pans. The 67 RA cars had a rubber plug in the hole except Cal. RA cars. They used a vent tube similar to the 68, but not identical. I have never seen it reproduced and only seen pictures of one.
In ’68, the same tube is used on basically all Pontiacs. The 68 RA tube is no different to the std. tube, but it will only work if the hole in the valve cover is in the correct place.
Again just a suggestion, being it is a ’67 and you are running aftermarket valve covers with breathers, just plug the hole.
