[rciancia]

Any guidelines on the number of amps needed for the Variac ?

I will build my Dim Bulb tester this weekend.. makes sense.

Either building a dim bulb tester (very easy) or buying a variac so we can bring the line voltage up slowly might be of some help here.

New electrolytic caps burn up if:
They are defective
They are in backwards
They are exposed to higher voltage than they are rated for
They have excessive AC current on them

I'm thinking the last item being caused by a short. Go back and quadruple check the wiring around resistor #22 and #23, where you had a problem before. One end of 23 is almost ground,one end of 22 is B+ Also recheck block cap #24 if it is shorted or mis-wired it would short the power supply out