8800gtx cooling problem

Hello. A month ago my xfx8800gtx one day started showing memory errors, and after a few minutes of running any 3d application it'd crash the system (test drive would crash it after just a few secs). Since there's no guarantee on it anymore (and I bought it on newegg anyway ; living in dk) I decided to replace the stock tim with some as5. And here's where my problem with cooling is!
I cannot assemble the thing anymore, cause the memory modules had some kind of fabric soaked in tim, that connected it and the heatsink. I no longer have that, and therefore there's roughly a millimeter of air between the memory chips and the sink. What've other people done to remidy this problem? Do they even have it?

I remember back when the cards were new I read of people who'd successfully replaced the tim with arctic ceramic or similar, but I didn't consider doing so while there was warranty left on the card, and thus didn't actually read what they'd done to accomplish it.

I've bought a hd4870 as graphics now, which works great (if you disregard driver issues) performance wise, and if I could get my 8800gtx running again I was thinking of using it for physics when nvidia releases a driver for g80. That would most likely require the memory modules to work though.

My only idea right now is to grind a millimeter of metal off of the cobber gpu sink and the standoffs, but I wouldn't mind a better solution if one exists. I'm not a particularily skilled metalworker.

really noone?