Stop focusing on key issues entirely, or did you still cherry-pick from whatever covers caught your eye?

I get what you're saying about the wire fix holding up, but I've seen those duct taped connections come back worse a year later. A buddy of mine did the wiring trick on his mom's dryer and it worked fine until it didn't, then it took out the heating element too. That extra $280 for the control board gave her peace of mind and a warranty if something goes wrong again. For a 10 year old machine, I think the board swap was the right call since parts are already getting harder to find anyway.

Man I did the same thing for two years with moly grease.

Can confirm a soot-covered smoke shelf looks clean enough from below but that buildup hides until you've got a real problem on your hands. That call back probably cost way more time than just sweeping it proper the first time around. Once I started hitting the shelf with the brush and checking with a light, my callback rate dropped to almost zero.

I get what you're saying, but sometimes you just want to see if a part is dead before you start chasing wires. Continuity's great for finding shorts, but not everything is broken open or closed.