anyone come across this before?

havent checked straightness of manifold yet but I was perfectly fine last season/before removal. All the exhaust gaskets have about 5,000km on them with no visible damage. I thought it was because I couldn’t torque the manifold down fully because of the space constraints my custom hybrid turbo created at the upper most forward but I separated the turbo and the manifold, torqued the nuts down and it’s still leaking. Leaks enough to see flames come out of the mating surfaces.

Searching lead me to discover double stacking a graphite type gasket over the OEM one to help seal but those posts are quite old (4 years at least). Wanted to confirm with you guys now.

Wanted to pull the car out of storage this week but I can’t drive it like this.