Am i the only person who gets these problems?

I'm going to have some trouble describing this so bear with me. I have a 65 289 that i put a weiand stealth intake on and i'm trying to put in this water hose fitting in that runs from the heatercore into the manifold. The fitting has a long tube that goes down into the manifold with threads near the top of it. It's shaped like an upside down L so you can attatch the hose to the other end. To get this to fit in the new maifold i had to go buy a 1/2'' to 3/8'' adapter because the hole in the maifold was too big for it. No probalem there. So i go to screw in the adapter and then the L shaped fitting and it goes down a few threads and then the end of the fitting hits part of the intake. I have no idea what the name of this part of the manifold is. It's the part that angles up and if you keep following it, it goes up to where the carb sits.
Hopefully you now have in idea what my problem is. I would just go buy an extension for the adapter but my concern is the L shaped fitting. There must be a reason why the part that screws in is so long and if i get an extension i will be shortening how far that part of the fitting goesinto the manifold. Therefore i might be changing how the water flows in the engine and that might cause a problem...or am i just crazy?
One more interesting thing is that on the otherside of the manifold (drivers side) there is a hole where the L fitting fits into perfectly but on my old cast iron intake the fitting went on the side that im having so much trouble with (passengers side)
So...my questions are. Can i just get a long extension for the fitting and not worry about it? or Should i move the fitting over to the opposite side and if so will that cause any problems?


thanks for taking the time to read this, i know its pretty long
-Jon