Ubuntu upgrade to 12.04: grub timeout does not work anymore

After doing the upgrade and solving some issues with my screen-resolution, another grub problem hit me:
The timeout for booting the standard kernel did not work anymore.
Inside /etc/default/grub

GRUB_TIMEOUT=10

and update-grub, grub worked like

 GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1

If you need a  good manual  just look here, but this does not help me, too.

After some tries, i did the following:

In /boot/grub/grub.cfg i changed from

terminal_output gfxterm
if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ] ; then
  set timeout=-1
else
  if [ x$feature_timeout_style = xy ] ; then
    set timeout_style=menu
    set timeout=10
  fi
fi

to

terminal_output gfxterm
recordfail=0
if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ] ; then
  set timeout=-1
else
  if [ x$feature_timeout_style = xy ] ; then
    set timeout_style=menu
    set timeout=10
  fi
fi

This works, but i have to redo the change everytime update-grub is used...