I would like some pics of 79 and later gauge clusters without the ac vents. Did they come this way?

No- they all had the holes for the vents, but the non-AC cars had dummy plastic covers on them instead of the moveable doors/fins and no ductwork in the back. To change an AC guage bezel to non-AC you basically pull the moveable doors and put in the "dummy" panels- leaving you with two black rectangular "boxes" on the right side of bezel (center of dash).

I've got the panel out of the car right now, I'll take a pic of it here in a bit and put it up, as Eric said thought,It just has to little plastic panels over the holes