Update on my heater element rewiring - found the problem

Been there with a Maytag Bravos a couple winters back. Mine was the thermal cutoff and the cycling thermostat sitting side by side on the exhaust duct, and I had the leads flipped when I put a new element kit in. Dryer heated fine for one load, then the breaker tripped halfway thru the second one and I sat there convinced the element was shorted. Spent an evening with a cheap multimeter checking continuity before I finally laid the wires out next to the diagram stuck inside the control panel and spotted it. The two terminals on that housing were barely an inch apart and the spade connectors swapped over without any resistance, so it felt snug and correct either way. Once I moved the lead to the right terminal I ran four or five loads over the next week and the heat never dropped off again. Now I take photos at every stage of a repair, even mid job, because pulling two wires to reach something else behind them is exactly how these mixups happen. Another thing that helped me was labeling each connector with a bit of masking tape and a pen before disconnecting anything. Cheap insurance when the original wires all look identical after ten years of lint and heat.

On my old Whirlpool the two leads to that housing were cut to the same length, so either one could physically reach either terminal without any stretching. That's how mine went wrong the first time I did an element kit, everything seated fine and looked totally normal, and it still cooked one load before cutting out early. What I do now is move and reconnect one wire at a time, so there's never more than one loose end floating around to mix up. Takes a bit longer but there's nothing to second guess afterward. The masking tape trick helps too, I write a little T and an L on tags and stick them on the spades before I pull anything off. Around here the wiring sheet inside the console is usally long gone anyway, mine had faded to nothing behind the lint filter, so the tape method is about the only thing that saved me on a second repair a few years later.

I'm doing my first element swap this weekend on my mom's old dryer and this thread is making me nervous in a helpful way. Mine is so old the paper diagram inside the top is half rubbed off from heat, so I can't fully read which wire goes where on that little guard piece. If the diagram is faded or missing, is there a way to figure out the right spots from the part itself, or should I just look up the model number and find the sheet online before I unplug anything?