Have looked at it many times but didn't realize it's a FLEX CIRCUIT BOARD...
Holly crap no wonder the freekin thing fissles out so easy.
Key to its construction and functionality also appears to be the heat sink that is intimate with the flex board. Bad process or no contact on the flex board...well then instant fusible link.

I'm going to try and get a couple of the wiz kids here to reverse engineer this and put in REAL resistors.