Land Rover turbo flange leak

Well here we go again!

   The oil leak in my #3 cylinder was apparent by the oil bubbling out of the turbo to exhaust flange. Since noting this I have tried different things to try to mitigate the oil. First I tried new gasket, no help.

Then I filed the surface of the turbo flat and clean as it appeared the worse for wear, no help.

Next up was some exhaust putty, it was hard to put on and oil blew right out. It was even harder to clean off! No help.

Now yesterday I removed the turbo and exhaust and this morning took it down to a machine shop. Jerry looked at it and told me he couldn't hold it in his machine unless the turbo was dismantled. He did get out some feeler gauges and a straight edge to check for the low spot. Right where I knew it was it was .01 low. Pretty darn good for and old guy and some files!

So I brought it home and put it in the vise. Below you can see the pitting from time immemorial. The side on the bottom was the leakier side.

Then using a sanding block I started to work. At first I went with 400 grit but that was hardly removing any material, so I went up to 220.

I don't have any dyekem so I used a Magic Marker to coat the face.

Then a light pass with the sanding block revealed the high spots.

Then back to the sanding. The low spots on the sides were giving me a hard time. Nothing I did seemed to get rid of them.

I re-marked with red ink and checked for high spots.

Then I figured my plastic sanding block was flexing so I used a piece of 1/2' steel plate I had. Wrapping the sand paper around it I went at the flange again.

Again starting over with 220 I worked my way through 400, 600 and 1500 grit. In the end I had not enough gap to fit a feeler gauge through.

All in all I did around an hour and a half  to two hours of sanding, It was 94F today............

I finally got a hold of my son in law and he will let me know tonight when I can borrow the bore scope. I want to look up #3 exhaust port and see if I can find any telltale for where the oil leak is coming from. Might as well do it while I have everything apart.