It has been a considerable time since last post. The main reason is explained in the picture below.
The red arrows point to a part of the gasket that has two blanked off ports. However, there are holes in the head and block indicating that water is meant to flow through. So why are these places blocked??
Last time the head was off due to some compression loss issues was in the mid 1970's. At that time the mechanic working on the engine punched holes in these places. Furthermore, I found a picture of a 1948 Triumph 1800 Roadster (my car and the Triumph share the same engine).
Here the two holes are not blocked. This was very annoying. I wanted to do the right thing. Hence though the wonder of internet, I went about asking for assistance. For these extremely early Jaguars, there is not much help available, There just a handful of people left who know a thing or two.
I put my question on the Jag-Lovers Forum. Here is a link to the conversation that ensued: https://forums.jag-lovers.com/t/1-5-litre-head-gasket-question/415554
As a result of this discussion, I decided to use the gasket without punching out the holes:
The required head torque is 1100in-lb or 91.67 ft-lbs with Hylomar blue applied to the gasket on both sides. I thought it better to tighten the head bolts in two steps with a 10 min gap in between. In the first phase I went with 50ft-lbs and in the final phase to 92 ft-lbs.
Next step will be to install the tappets and do a compression check.