hmm well the manifold has always been like this.. here is a pic of it when i first got the car.



the above picture is with the stud in, before i 'tampered' with it and is exactly how i sent it through both tests this month (both of which I failed).

as you can see, it is quite offset anyway, isn't it? true, snapping the stud has probably made it worse.. but judging by the above pic, would you say the same problem of air entering the system would have occurred?

It's clearly not sitting tight up on the right hand side as well as it is on the left..

Thanks for all the responses by the way, its sooo encouraging to finally have some progress lol