Discovered yesterday that the mild air leak I've been chasing was caused by a pulled intake manifold stud. I did a search and came up with several varying opinions on thread repair (helicoils suck! use time-serts! no! time-serts crack, weld em up!). At the risk of stirring that up again, I'd like to ask for opinions from the engine builders on what is the best thing to do here. I've only ever done this in cast iron.
Note that this is not a race engine, or even a much flogged engine, but just a daily driver 1.7 that has to last for another year while I put together the cash to buy a kit from Jake to build a real motor. If I can do this without even taking the head off (just drop the engine to get enough room to work), that would be best of all.
I'm also open to theories on why the stud pulled. I didn't overtorque them when installing the manifold (carbs), only using a stubby wrench for space reasons. Not to say they've never been overtorqued. I've only had the car for three weeks, and the heads had been rebuilt shortly before I bought it.