I've always redone the wiring on Philco speaker harnesses-they just don't seem to hold up that well. I have a roll of cloth-covered brown wire for just such a purpose. As far as the tacked-on repairs go, that is how they all seem to have been done. I know Philco had radio-counter displays so you could grab the replacement bakelite block you needed, but they apparently never sold many of them.
I restuff bakelite blocks, but I don't use the heat gun/oven methods, I just pull the block, and chisel out the guts with a small screwdriver. It takes about two minutes to get them all cleaned out. One of the blocks in my 60 had two mica caps in it, so I just let it be, since the other micas in the set tested fine.
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