Sounds OK to me, worth a try. necessity is the mother of invention

Cheers
DD

 

Congrats on achieving a runner . . . lots of learning; great milestone; plenty of encouragement to push on.

I recall one of my early XK rebuilds ending in a persistent non-starter . . . had both fuel and spark . . . coughing, farting, but no starting . . . very discouraging and took me a full week aided by lots of expert help before finding the in-distributor capacitor was failing . . . plenty of spark at LT and also HT for a single test spark, but then a persistent breakdown that leaked LT from the points. Finding that $2 fix 50 years ago, has left me paranoid about discarding/replacing that item on all my rebuilds. I'll bet you become just as paranoid about checking and re-checking distributor clamps bolts!

No O-ring . . . you will compromise the stud tension needed to tighten down the head. Recommend you use each and all of the steps advised by DD in post on your parallel thread. Suggest also that you confine discussion of that issue to that thread . . . avoids confusion.

Best wishes,

Ken