I've never tried replacing them, so I couldn't elaborate on the safety factor of this, or how reliable the new cap will be. To be on the safe side, I would remove them ASAP. Just remember that if you do so, your modchips must be loaded with an "error 16 ready" bios.
It could be true that the clock caps in the 1.6's are less leak prone. It's up to you whether or not you want to take the risk.
One option is that you could replace the caps and then, without applying power to the consoles, put them back into storage. This way, the caps would not ever have been charged, and shouldn't leak.
This post has been edited by xboxmods2977: Nov 1 2011, 07:09 PM