[mopars&vampires]

Hello I am new here-
So today I put myself in a good bind. I finally got my ’69 charger back on the road recently after an engine rebuild (383), a painless wire harness install, and a bunch of front suspension work. Doing pretty good, but I notice that I am still drooling a little oil when I get going. So I tracked the source to the fuel pump. Took it off and found a goobered gasket probably done by my old roommate who is a GM guy who helped my with my rebuild. Bought the $2 gasket and figured I would be done soon. Well, I apparently don’t have the sequence right. I noticed that to get the pump back on and have the bolts square, I would need to remove the fuel pump pushrod. Fine, but then how do I get it back in? Maybe get one bolt in, replace the pushrod, then get the second one in? That seemed to work but I had not put the gasket in place to prevent damaging it. Long story short, the second time I only managed to fubar my threads and get nowhere but close. So I need to get the threads fixed (know any one in colorado who does a good job?) But then how do I prevent this from happening again, am I missing something in the sequence? Someone have a tutorial? I have the shop manual and it didn’t have much to offer for the installation. I am pretty mechanical and have worked on many a cars and done almost all the work on this car myself. This is really the first major f-up I have done of this caliber. The fuel pump is an aftermarket carter, so that might be part of the issue. Any advice welcome. Thanks