Update:
Today was just a good old fashion kick in the nuts.
-Housing won't get here till tomorrow. It didn't make the 2:30pm deadline for overnight yesterday.
-I thought I pulled the wire out of the AC cut off sensor yesterday while pulling housing which would not have been a big deal. Well it ended up being the temp sensor for the dash gauge. Since the wire tore right off at the plug it became useless. I ended up splicing in a small female spade connector and management to connect it to the sensor. It works again.
-While I had the drive belt off I checked all the pulleys. Yesterday I replaced tensioner pulley thinking that was squeaking. Well today I noticed my fan clutch pulley didn't spin like I would think it would. Ordered one of those from Oriellys. That should be here 8am tomorrow morning.
-Also noticed some steam coming from radiator on driver side after I drove it a bit to get it up to temp. Hopefully it's residual coolant from yesterday's drain which we let run down that side of from the top hose.
-Also have some sort of knock sound. To me it sounds like an injector knock yet you can only hear it while in the cab. Local Moab Cummins mechanic said it sounded fine when idling and revving which stumped him what it could be. Sent some crappy video with sound to
@GLTHFJ60. He pretty much agreed with Cummins guy here that if you can't hear it in the engine bay it can wait. From what I have read up on it I agree. It will wait til back home.
Hopefully tomorrow brings good things because today was one of those days you wish to be back home. Maybe the goal now is to get the truck back to par and head home, which the wife wants me to do. I still wish to salvage some wheeling and exploring on this trip so dammit I'm not giving up just yet. I don't want any regrets.
@The Phoenician here's your photo. It can only get better than this view.
@NLXTACY your lighter worked great to melt shrink tubing on my broken wire fix.