Recently my transistor burnt up on the board from holding the left flipper in to cradle a ball. Replaced transistor. This has really changed how I play because Im afraid of it happening again so I no longer cradle. Talking to a friend about it he mentioned that the end of stroke switch should've kept that from happening and maybe it was a fluke occurrence. I checked my switch and Im under the impression the contacts are supposed to be apart and when the flipper is up it pushes them together and activates the switch. However the EOS switch contacts on my machine are touching and then are separated when the flipper is up. I think this is wrong, when I do a switch test in the diagnostics, the DMD says NONE, then when I move the flipper up it says NONE then when I let the flipper go back down its says the EOS switch is open and stays displayed until I touch another switch. No other switches on the game tests that way. Are these things on backwards or something??? The pic shows what the switch looks like when the flipper is down. Should the switch be flipped over and bent slightly apart so contact is made when the flipper is up?

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Waiting for a response I found this video and between 2-3 mins I think this guy confirms my suspicion but Im too new at this to know if its the same for ALL machines or if some companies reversed the design.

Any thoughts this LTG ? I think some of the best answers I find on pinside are usually from you.

Its a Transformers LE
I guess what was confusing to me is the way the switch test reads that its activate after the flipper is down but doesn't start off that way. Seems odd -enter test with nothing- -Move flipper up with finger = nothing- -let flipper go = switch activates- But I'm still learning so any explanation is appreciated!

I read this in several threads when I was in the middle of the fix for the transistor and installed IRL540Ns and also removed capacitors 52 and 53, which Chas from Stern emailed me and told me removing those capacitors was a modification done to that board. If the root cause truly was poor transistors to begin with, then I can stomach that being that I replaced them, but I was digging for potentially a different root cause. So I guess the real question is, should I go back to cradling during multi ball and stop worrying about the board burning up again?