Yes, it might be best to fit a socket rather than reworking the pcb over and over. I expect you might need to do several flash cycles with trial and error to figure out what to swap. I attempted to install a TSOP 44 socket in an ls1 pcm once, but my soldering skills were not quite up to it. You sound like you might have the skills to do it though.
There are 4 blocks that start with MFS*. They are @ 4000-41ED, 4200-43ED, 6000-609F, 6200-62A0 as well as some other data between 4400-47F7. Due to the FFs the block ends ive named are somewhat arbitary. I think these 5 chunks are what you should attempt to swap.
.. or maybe ..
Keep in mind these are only my best guesses to point you in the right direction. My highlighting is not the only way to look at this, just for ideas.
The MFS blocks may also be an index in to other segments in the bin, in which case the data from 4400-47F7 is the most likely suspect.