Jeff,
Nice find! I'm not sure if you are still following this thread, but if you are, I have a few thoughts I'd like to offer you as well.
Documentation is critical here. Many companies have infrared surveys performed to reduce their insurance premiums. Unfortunately, if the time comes that the equipment has a catastrophic failure, the insurance company will be very reluctant to cover avoidable losses. If you have reported this loss for a period of time, this damage will most likely be considered avoidable. If you have not documented this problem, the insurance company will want to know why you did not, and your professional image will be tarnished as a minimum. Whether the insurance company pays or not, the premiums may increase because the customer is proving themselves to be a greater risk by thier non-responsiveness.
Help your customer understand that your "find" is in a failure mode already. Repairs at this time will be much lower than at some future date. The longer this is allowed to run in this condition, the worse the damage and the greater the expense to repair (or eventually replace). Also, your client may not have considered the ramifications of an unplanned, disorganized outage that may result from a catastrphic failure of this transformer. Reluctance to properly respond to the information you provide incurs costs that may not have been considered. Often there are safety and environmental concerns that are overlooked. Usually, there are also production and quality control costs that should be included in their decision-making process.
Another concern you should have is that the temperature and the delta-T at the source (often a high-resistance connection) may be significantly higher than is apparent from the bushing. While 27-F may not seem high to your client, the delta-T at the source could easily be >100-F. If your client could see that measurement their response might have more urgency.
I believe there are images of a pole transformer (inside & out) in the gallery that help to show the importance of early detection/early response.
Good luck with your efforts. Thank you for your professionalism in approaching this problem. We, ultimately, are responsible in great part for the image of thermographers in the world of maintenance and reliability. Keep up the good work.
MJJ