Can't get radio back in its case

You give up to easily. Pull out the chassis from the case. Shove a piece of paper in between the chassis and case where you suspect it might be binding. Push the chassis into the case until it stops. Pull it out again. You should see some damage to the paper where the chassis and case are binding.

When that happens to me, most of the time it's either loose wires or wrong length screw.

Jeff, have you ever smashed anything to bits when you couldn't repair it or just became impatient?

No. If I want to exercise my frustrations over a failed repair, I have a wood pile that always needs chainsawing, bucking, splitting and stacking:

The closest I've come to destroying uncooperative electronics are with devices that can't be easily opened or are intentionally designed to be impossible to repair. Apple products come to mind. I save them in a box to age slowly. Once fully depreciated, I offer the remains to the various electronics gods as burnt offerings, usually on the barbecue grill during summer and inside the wood burning stove during winter. If I'm too lazy to fix something, I sell it on eBay as "parts only". When I was younger and didn't have a proper alter on which to process burnt offerings, I practiced cannibalism by unsoldering any parts and pieces could be salvaged. I also owned a large axe (named "coin return"), which was quite useful for reducing large repair problems into smaller repair problems.

That's a great idea, Jeff - break the problem down into small, manageable parts. Then scrape them up and toss them in the garbage. Every one's a winner! :-D

Thanks, but such pre-processing is not an original idea for recycling electronics. Shredding and granulating electronics is exactly what the eWaste recyclers do today.