78 with 79 engine. Cant close hood

[18Fiatsandcounting]

For what it's worth, and I may have mentioned this before somewhere on this forum, but I put a 2L block in my '69 spider, keeping the original crossmember. No clearance issues, although I did keep the original 1438 cc cylinder head and intake manifold (been working fine for 70K miles or so), and so I used the original setup of a block-mounted distributor. I already had a free-flow air cleaner housing, which may have provided some extra clearance with regard to the hood (original, no bumps), and everything seemed to work fine.

The only issue was that I had to machine a new oil filter mounting flange out of aluminum. This was decades ago, but I seem to recall that the filter mounting flange that came with the 2L block didn't work for one reason or another. I can't remember whether it was a clearance issue or just that I wanted to get rid of a big, heavy chunk of metal.

-Bryan