I managed to break one of the wires to a coil on the original cores, so I went ahead with replacement IF cans. ?It is now working OK. ?The IF is tuned to 455 kHz and stays there and a run through of the tuning procedure and for the time being the radio is done.
Pic below of the replacement IF cans in situ, they do not look that out of place. So generally happy it is working and picking stations OK.