Blower switch connector is a bit cooked. The "Light Blue" wire isn't so much for a bit back from the connector.


Still, there’s no short between the A and B connections so that’s good news.
Checking continuity of the wires between the Blower Switch (Lt Bl, Yel, Tan) and the Resistor Connection test good despite the burned Switch connector.
Checking the resistor’s resistance values and connectivity for both the old and new gave me mixed results and had a bit confused because connectivity at the pins on the front and resistance values for the coils were different. Which one correct? Not knowing (photo’s courtesy of RockAuto).

So I set the new resistor in place and hooked things up just for grins and giggles. Confidence was not high and I wasn’t disappointed because just as I remembered from before, there was absolutely no voltage getting to the blower motor. FWIW, my new resistor was out of the box from AC Delco.
I put the old one on and it was as before, only low and high. I did some further inspection of the old unit which is original to the truck and, honestly, looked cheaper. I noticed that it appeared two of the resistance coils were in contact which, given the nature of construction, didn’t seem like a big deal but, I separated them and tried things again.
SUCCESS! All speeds work. Even after reassembly everything is working fine. So, my original diagnostics were correct, I just had a bad out of the box part. I’m not even going to speculate how the OEM resistor went south with two coils coming in contact unless it was during the repair of the leaking Heater Coil and I bumped the resistor which is about 1/2. I don’t recall the blower motor’s issues showing up at that time but, who the $%^&* knows.
It is now working and I can move on to diagnosing and repairing the 4x4 actuator failure.
NEXT!