Fantastic job Marcin, and an excellent write up too
My lack of photos probably did you a favour, now you've "been there, done that" yourself, and probably have a much better understanding because of it. It's over two years now since my saga and I was very much at the mercy of those who had the car. One garage, Swift Motorsport, a local VAG independent specialist diagnosed the fault and stripped and cleaned the manifold (I witnessed it stripped down and cleaned when they showed me the failed flap) and the engineer carried out the repair for them after I was directed to him by someone who knew he'd done similar work previously. Even TPS helped me out by being incompetent as I was resigned to buying a new manifold and would have done had they been able to deliver, but that's another story.
I'm sure this will give others the satisfaction that preventative maintenance can be done to prevent failure, and even if failure comes it's not the end of the world. At the time of my drama all I could find were examples of them failing and causing engine damage and after seven weeks I was just glad to get the car back running as it should, as you can imagine.
This great forum, and the many knowledgeable people on it never fail to deliver, great work