Glad you didn't mess with those tuning coils. If anything, the should be peaked. They form a network of impedance matching from the synthesized audio/freq to the driver/final transistors. There was a thread somewhere on the forum that showed how to lower the dead key by adding 3-4 diodes in series, but cannot recall the name of it.
Noticed in the schematic that your radio uses a 2sc2166 for the final. This particular transistor is usually used as a driver transistor and not a final transistor. So at best it can only do ~12 watts peak power; and even that is pushing it.
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