What am I seeing in this exhaust port?

[YellowSplittie]

I recently pulled my 19 year old AVP rebuilt 2.0 to replace the pilot bearing. This engine has performed flawlessly with about 12K miles on it since installation. While I had the engine out, I decided to do some long put off detailing and things I wish I had the time and money to do back then. I pulled off all the tins, exhaust, and such to clean and paint. I looked into the exhaust ports and see this:

Is that a really poor weld to fix a crack? I picked at it, thus the bare spot.

It also looks as though that port was leaking around the exhaust manifold, correct?

[Abscate]

Yes and yes.
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.ssS!

[Wasted youth]

Big ol’ scab... it’s like they took a tire weight, made it soft with heat and packed it in there like a plug of Copenhagen dip. So cool!