Is it against Google TOS to make simple modification to the code of cse (Custom search engine) ?

I just want to remove the slashes, example:

from <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:11" />

to <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:11" >

to make my pages validate, because My pages use HTML 4.01 Transitional and not XHTML, thats why I get warnings when trying to validate using W3C.

I've already emailed Google (AdSense because I don't know how to contact the cse support) but only got the auto reply which didn't help

I'm worried because I'm using Google custom search engine with my AdSense account and I don't want to get banned!

It seems that I'm the only one who has this situation.

Why do you care if your code validates??

Not validating 100% won't effect your rankings, or the ability of people to see your website..