RCA CTC-5 Flyback Melting

[TVBeeGee]

Some have written here that it is normal to see some melted wax around 1950's RCA color flybacks. How much is normal?

When seeing a demo of this CTC-5AA (Deluxe) chassis prior to purchasing it, we heard a loud bang as the CRT came up and saw high voltage and horizontal sweep, but no vertical deflection, so we immediately shut it down.

When doing a physical inspection today (long before I will attempt to power it again), I noticed bright yellow wax that apparently has dripped from the flyback upper coil onto the lower. Bright yellow "stalagmites" can be seen in the first picture. The second picture shows the bottom of the flyback, where bright yellow wax can be seen oozing around the sides of the lower coil.

Wow. I'm pretty disappointed. How close to disaster is this flyback?

I've been unable to find any ruptured caps to account for the bang and missing vertical, the vertical pots seem OK and the ohm readings on the vertical output transformer look reasonable. Could a failing flyback have caused the vertical loss?

Other than horizontal efficiency tuning and minimizing the HOT current, can anything else be done to extend the life of a flyback with this much melted wax? Yikes!