Ah yes, the classic "worked fine for four decades and then died the second you touched it" trick. Old paper and wax caps don't care if the radio sits or runs, they just dry up and rot from the inside out, so replacing only the two that split is like fixing two boards on a rotten deck. Every one of those caps is the same age and same junk, so you'll be pulling the chassis again next month when the next one lets go. Swap them all at once, it's cheaper than a new output transformer when a shorted cap takes it out.

Did your old coworker say who ran the audit? A buddy of mine went through something like this at a warehouse chain. Everyone swore the screening tool was dinging people with gaps in their work history. Turns out it was mostly dinging people who lived more than 45 minutes away, because the system scored commute time as a "reliability risk." Folks in the next county over got cut at almost double the rate, and nobody in HR had any clue that field was even in the model. He only found out because a dev pulled the feature weights during a slow week. So yeah, the thing you're sure is the problem is often just the loudest guess.