For hood clearance, there are a couple of things you can do. First is take a hammer to the carb base, and knock the center up so that the rim goes down. I did that on mine to not only lower it a tad, but level it.
Second, you can get rid of the Ford spacer plate below the "funnel" adapter, by drilling holes or slots in the adapter base to bolt it direct to the manifold. I've got a thread on that somewhere around here, but this mobile device makes searching a pita. Search for my username and something like "direct mount Weber".