Well, damn. I made the changes and ran it at 10A for a while. No problems. Ramped it up to 20A, no prob. Ran it at 27A and the module shorted again. Did find out that the switcher will do 60A for about 2 sec before protection kicks in. Impressive.
Unfortunately I did not get a picture on the scope before it went.
Here are meter readings from the dead module:
E-C 4.3
B-E 43.3
B-C 39.3
Bx-E 4.3
Bx-C .4
B-Bx 39.3
What's excellent is nothing is acting like a diode now. Swapping leads gave the same readings.
Here's a good one for comparison.
E-C FWD 382K REV 8.3K
B-E FWD 97 REV 97
B-C FWD 8.35K REV 358K
Bx-E FWD 54 REV 54
Bx-C FWD 8.23K REV 336K
B-Bx FWD 42.6 REV 42.6