231 Odd Fire Intakes

So I got my engine back from the guy that welded up the block. Weld looks great BTW. I was looking to see if the Edelbrock intake I picked up will work. The Intake is a 5486 which says it fits 1979 and later v6's. My engine is the 1975-1976. It looks like all the bolt holes and intake ports line up nice but the EGR ports dont line up. Can I just block this port off in the head or intake (not running EGR anyway) and be fine.

In the pic below the Edelbrock intake is on top with the factory below

 

On my 255 both the new intake gasket and the one I removed blocked that port. I'm confused as well but I know it was driven years like that.

 

Lots of these aftermarket manifolds seem to have gotten caught in a time warp......perhaps in an attempt to try to accommodate changes in cylinder head productions between the early small port 225 odd fire through the mid 70's odd fire larger port and into the later 79 and beyond taller port motors of which the latter pair also had smog or heat ports...........the smog or heat riser ports go right into the exhaust side of the combustion chamber.......and should be plugged off in the head if they don't match the manifold.......a standard intake gasket is not designed to take exhaust heat that would normally be passing by there to heat the manifold.
In lots of cases they may already be plugged off from carbon build up?.......the OD hole sizes in some head ports can be bored slightly to accommodate a small freeze plug.....while other ports are just to odd shaped.........when I was playing with a later 231 Buick project that had later turbo heads on it I poured the ports and then re-machined the combustion chambers to solve that so I could use a manifold of choice.........maybe a different manifold is a better option?

 

It appears that the EGR port is the only thing not lining up on my application. The previous owner had the EGR blocked off on top of the factory manifold and I would not be using the EGR regardless. I dont see why this intake would not work with just doing what you did with the EGR port on my heads.

 

It's there to warm the manifold up some for better drive-ability .......cold weather starts and driving.

 

My Offenhauser manifold 360 just blocks off the port. The original poster may have to plug it if the ports overlap. On my 225 the old blue Felpro gasket looked fine, no burning and there was carbon build up in the port. When I changed mine, I just cleaned the surface and installed the same brand. If I was more careful I would plug it like you suggest. It's probably very hard on the gasket.