Sorry, forgot about this thread. Ok, add the menu wrapper back in (keep your custom image inside the {capture} tag, but change it to menu2.tpl. Create a new template called menu2.tpl, and insert this code in to it:
Code:
<TABLE border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<TR>
<TD class="VertMenuBorder">
<TABLE border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" width="100%">
<TR>
<TD class="VertMenuBox">
<TABLE border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<TR>
<TD>{$menu_content}
</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
See if that does the trick.