One piece exhaust gaskets from Audi/OEM are not a good fit...
While the exhaust gaskets
from Audi are a decent fit to the cylinder head they are not a good fit to the
exhaust manifold itself in either the AAH or AFC manifolds. No matter how you
place it there exists an offset mis-match
that will exist between between the front and rear
ports within the manifold. I've tried 2 different pair of manifolds (AAH/AFC)
and 2 different manufacturer's sets of gaskets (Audi/OEM) with the same
results. You can get #1 & #2 bores reasonably (not perfectly) aligned but
when you do #3 bore the gasket overhangs the bore on one side by approx
1/8" (.125") and is away from the bore an identical/corresponding
amount on the other side of the exhaust bore.
Best solution that affords getting great alignment and centering of the gasket
on all bores is to cut each gasket flange out of the one-piece assembly and use
them as 3 individual gaskets rather than one gasket with 3 ports. Easy to do with tin snips or aircraft snips. Just cut each
flange from the 3/4" wide strip that holds them all together.
Even the Audi gasket I pulled from between the exhaust manifold and AAH heads
had this problem as you can easily see it's tell-tale outline of compression in
the gasket material and on the cast iron exhaust manifold itself.
I'll get pics up in the next few days of the problem,
it's affects and the solution.