[TowerTalk] Apparent choke balun blown, now what

[N4IJ]

Took down a choke balun today to inspect ot since it
has been sitting on a wooden post with no antenna connected. Homemade with
balanced output I used with
a fullsize vertical GP for 80m.   Anyway it looks like it either got really
hot or maybe lightening, not sure. Attached pic of apparent hot spots.
This is a pair of FT240 toroids glued together with teflon wire pairs etc.
Balun choke,  not unun.

Is there really a way to determine if the cores are good or not?  If it
weren't visible by several of the brown fiber tape that holds the wire
pairs together I wouldn't know any better.  I hate to toss it....

73 Doug N4IJ