Funny! We have all had projects like that I think. I have spent the last 3 weeks trying to solve a leak with my water outlet (tried two new types of gaskets, and finally a new water outlet). Thought for sure "I fixed it" only to see later that although it was better it was still dribbling all over my nice clean and freshly painted intake manifold. What I finally realized is one bolt was not getting tight enough (and I didn't want to strip the threads out) so all I had to do was borrow a thread cleaner from Auto Zone, clean out the threads on the intake manifold, and get 1/4" longer bolts. That seemed to do the trick....but man, I swear I could have pulled the engine and put it back in the amount of time I spent on that stupid water leak..