if you are limited by hood clearance- which means that the element is right up against the bottom of the hood- then one of those lids with the built in elements would be a huge waste of money.
get a drop base air cleaner for it-i know that on my cousin's 66 Chevelle with a 402 big block and a Performer RPM intake with a Holley carb with no spacer, a 3" element fit with a drop base air cleaner, and i test fit the 4" element that i was running on my Nova, and the hood just barely rubbed when the hood was closed.
i did some air cleaner testing with my Nova at a 1/8 mile track on a friday night grudge race.
my car had about 400hp, and i tried 5 different fileter/housing combos- new Wix 14X3 open. new Wix 14X4 open. slightly used Fram filter in a stock late 70's housing with an extra duct riveted to it with lid sealed, same modified stock housing with lid flipped, and that housing with a pair of dryer ducts zip tied to the bottom of the core support.
all runs were within 1/2 hour i nthe evening with absolutely no tuning done between runs, and the times were all within 1/100 second and a couple of mph- with the fastest being the ram air setup. granted, the car was fairly inconsistent thru the 60 foot timers due to traction problems, but i found out that on that particular car, the air cleaner didn't really amount to much difference.
