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I never got a car chip report from that sensor that also happened at the same time the symptoms were occurring. The car chip is neat, but it can only track 4 things at a time. If you pick the 4 wrong things to track, it doesn't help you. When I did watch the temperature, it was normal and the car behaved normally. That's the big difficulty with this intermittent problem. How can you study a problem if you can't recreate it consistently? After I had settled on this sensor being a problem, the car behaved perfectly, so I couldn't test the theory by just unplugging the sensor when the stalling happened, and seeing if the car improved.
But I did check the resistance of both the new sensor and the old sensor at room temperature, and they didn't match. I played with the old sensor by running it under hot water, and it was cool watching the resistance change as the water got hotter. So the old sensor did something. Not sure if it was the right thing.
I'll tell you this though. My wife was talking about selling the car if this kept up much longer. So I didn't have the luxury of doing nothing and just waiting for the problem to happen again so I could study it some more. A $30 educated guess is OK with me. Better than losing thousand by having to get rid of the car and find a new one.
Based on a few different posts at Toyota Nation, where people had this exact same problem, and the ECT sensor was the culprit, I'm fairly confident this is going to fix it. We'll know if the car doesn't stall before the end of March. 2 months is the longest it ever went without stalling. I may be eating my words. We'll see.
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