Looks like I’m not the only one to pull the distributor clamp bolt through the top of the timing cover.
The replacement cover is from a slightly later efi 3.5,and notice the webbing landrover added around the clamp bolt hole,nice..

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Speaking of differences,on cleaning up the replacement cover,noticed a factory blank in one the heater inlet holes on the water pump plate? Only spotted it chance..
Geeked out,and this is normal for the efi setup ,having a bypass around thermostat etc.
So punched the blank out easily to accomodate the two inlet hoses from manifold to suit early twin stromberg carb setup.

I didn’t build this engine,but had added a new timing chain,and my bad as knew the rollmaster sets are wider and never grooved out where they scrape on the front of the timing cover..naughty smack!
And yes,it had cut a neat line where the chain pins hit.

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Dremeled a 2mm groove in the replacement cover to suit and added the landrover Teflon ended thrust bolt onto the end of camshaft.
The book says to shave it to obtain 5 thou clearance,didn’t bother with that,just used paint marker and trial and error mating up the timing cover with gasket to block until no paint transferring onto inside of timing cover,that’ll do,better than nothing to assist cam walk in future.

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Last thing before reinstalling the cover was to take off and reset the crank timing from the existing 2 deg advanced to 4 deg advanced on the keyway..
The test run and leak check seems positive,,maybe imaginary but does seem to pull better down low..

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