[jjbuzard]

I am a novice, so please bear with me, I just replaced all the tubes in this radio and the main capacitors, ( I was told it worked but the guy that had it pulled out all the tubes out and no one knew why, (tubes were missing, not with radio) he pulled them to check is my opinion as the main caps were bad and all it did was HHHHMMMMM after I put in the new tubes) After replacing these parts it played fine then after about 3 minutes there was a SNAP - and then PSSssHHhhhsssss, smoke rolled out but it kept playing fine, I shut it down pulled the chassis out and looked everything over closley, no burnt looking items, no smoke marks, all resisters look good, all capacitors look good, all new ones installed correctly. So I put it back in and plugged it in and turned it on, played great, played for about 3 hours and all of a sudden silence, I unplugged it and looked and everything seemed fine but I could smell something burnt and a sizzling noise, I pulled the chassis out and and the main transformer was hot, still sizzling and smelled burnt. The transformer is fried, are they difficult to replace (with multiple wires) my plan is to replace all the remaining capacitors, but the snap and pssstt sound and smoke and the fried transformer have me worried. Should I go ahead or should I send it to someone to fix?

Also I noticed the wire on top of the tuner was covered with a crumbling yellow crud and the one end looping through an opening but not touching anything or soldered, whats with this, see picture.