lol. wiseguy

 

Wow the only thing ive found when my ect comes unplugged is the car runs a little sluggish but it always starts fine. Glad to see you got it sorted out

 

that's because his sensor was shorted internally. it causes it to read hot (lean mixture). unplugging it will either default to cold or cause the ecm to think that it's cold (rich mixture). an NTC sensor reads cold with high resistance and hot with low resistance. most temperature sensors operate this way.

the car will not start with a lean mixture on a cold start. under normal operation, the ecm actually dumps a crap load of fuel on a cold start. main reason for this is fuel tends to stick to the walls of the intake plenum, valves and cylinder walls on a cold engine. this is known as HC drop out. it's actually a major concern to vehicle manufacturers. both from an emissions and economical standpoint

 

Ah ok, I've never had one actually fail on me.

My old 280z used the coolant temp sensor for the same thing. I bypassed it using a potentiometer so I could get better cold starts (cold start valve didn't work in my car) and to get a little better mileage.