Product review (4 stars): beware of online troubleshooting videos
turns out this was not the problem, needed new heat element. there is some misleading info online about these. I watched a video that said the resistance on my ohm meter should be just over 10k so when it registered 46k I thought it was bad. turns out, the online video was bad, so just beware of troubleshooting videos online. Easy part to access and replace though, and now I guess I have a spare.