['LIVEWIRE?']

If the radio is working reasonably well with L3 shorted out, I don't see how any harm can be caused by leaving it that way permanently. All it means is that there is one less tuned circuit in the RF stage, hence my comment about selectivity in an earlier post. IIRC, the later Radiomobile/Motorola radios (970/980, 727/828, 1070/1080, etc.) omitted one coil (L4), and coupled L3 to the base of Tr1 via a capacitor instead, and they were very good performers. What you are doing, out of necessity, is bypassing L3. Whether using a capacitor instead of just shorting out L3 would be better could only be found by trying it, and some experimenting to find the optimum value cap. would be required. Since shorting out L3 doesn't upset ant DC conditions I'd be inclined to leave it that way. Other than from a donor set, you are never going to be able to replace the coil anyway. The reason for poor performance on LW with L3 shorted out is that, due to the low resistance of the primary of L4, the preset LW aerial coil, L2 is virtually earthed when the set is switched to LW, thus reducing the strength of the signals received via the aerial. If LW reception is important, bypassing L3 with a capacitor would be better. Somewhere between 4n7 (4700pf)and 10n (10000pf) should suffice (if I've done my sums right!)