I'm having the same problem with my dryer, seems to be getting progressively more frequent. I'm going to have to change out the blower motor at some point in time. I opened the dryer up, was able to get the blower fan off the shaft (reverse thread) by putting a 6" crescent on the back shaft of the blower motor. I wasn't able to get the blower fan housing out though, it looks like the drum needs to come off. Anyone out there done that?

You will need to remove the drum. Take out the 4 screws holding the front of the drum in and slip the belt off of the spring loaded tensioner. Everything is MUCH easier to work on with the drum out of the way.

Hi BARTMAN,
The A1266 is the same thing as my A733. My transistor came in today and I am putting it in but I already purchased a replacement blower motor long ago to get a fast fix. Sorry but I don't think I will be in a hurry to tear the dryer down again to test this out since it is working fine, I'm hanging on to this motor as a spare for now. I posted earlier about how to test the transistor with a Fluke, look back on the earlier page. Maybe you can try one if you want to try and save the $145 and let us know. It is only a nickel and shipping from Mouser to try out! There isn't much to the circuit and from my experience these transistors fail pretty often. Jury is still out on this one though since no one has taken it all the way through and posted back with a fix.

BARTMAN,
You need to check it like a diode. Hopefully your Fluke has a Diode check mode - most do.
Switch the meter to the Diode symbol (arrow pointing to a line).
If you touch your leads together usually a Fluke will give an audible tone in this mode (beeps).
Take the transistor off the board (desolder it) and tape it down and spread the leads so you can probe it.
Put your black lead on the middle leg and put your red lead to either side.
You should see approximately 0.7
Put the red lead to the middle and black to the outside.
You should see no change - just like the leads are sitting apart and unused.
Switch your meter to resistance (ohms - Horseshoe symbol)
Reading across outside leads should be just like the leads on the meter are apart again. You should see no change (typically 0.L)

I just retested my original transistor and it is consistantly failing now. The new ones I picked up read perfect.

The electrical characteristics of the the general purpose transistor you reference look quite a bit diifferent than the datasheet for the A733. I would wait for the transistor you ordered to arrive and use it.
Just a note here - the testing method i described is just for the type of transistor used in this circuit (PNP). There are other types of transistors that look identical but are significantly different and need to be tested differently.
The case type or package may appear identical but that doesn't mean it will function in the circuit. The same is true with virtually all components.
I hope this helps and let us know if it fixes your dryer. Good luck!