It's all good. Thank you all. The FI bosses on the end of the runner protrude so far over the valve cover flange. That was problem 1. Scribed the bottom of the overhang and saw we had plenty of room to grind. Spacers were ordered ,not sure on the eta. But I could see that was just the beginning of fitting the intake to the Edelbrock heads. Those 2 bolts had to be shortened a little. Oblonging the hole helped. We contemplated 2 studs and a slot on the intake but I really didn't want to do that. There was a lot of meat above the bolt so we kept grinding and test fitting. Success! Sorry I don't have an install picture. I'll get one next time I'm at the shop.
I was really surprised how difficult it was to fit the Edelbrock parts together. I've had valve cover/intake issues before but this job was particularly difficult. There's no reason that this intake can't fit better out of the box. Disappointing.