Might have rodent damage to wires. a question

Can you post some photos of what you're talking about? The sensor itself is inside the transaxle, where only very determined aluminum-chewing rodents could get at it, I have to think you're talking about the wire harness where it goes to the resolver connector. But the situation doesn't seem totally clear the way you've described it.

 

Got it. That light gray thing is just a wiring connector. You can squeeze that tab and unplug it from the mating connector that is sticking out of the transaxle.

Neither one is the sensor. The sensor is buried inside the transaxle where you aren't going to see it, and so are the wires from the sensor to that mating plug sticking out of the transaxle, so they are pretty well protected from damage.

The only repair you need to make is of damaged wire to a connector plug.

Toyota sells what they call "repair wires": you look up the part number for the right one (or let the parts counter person do it for you), and what you get is the little metal terminal that lives inside the connector, with a short length of wire already attached. The right part number will be the 'waterproof' flavor, where the terminal has a rubbery seal crimped to it, just like the blue ones you see around the wires in your picture.

You squeeze the tab and unplug that gray connector, and you undo its terminal locking mechanisms (there are usually two, a primary and a secondary), and you poke the gnawed terminal/wire out the back of the connector and throw it in the trash. You push your shiny new repair-wire terminal and its rubbery seal into the same position on the connector until it clicks, then secure the secondary lock again.

You unwrap the wire harness covering for a short distance and find a good ungnawed spot on that wire to splice it to the repair wire you just added, using a parallel crimp inside a sealant-filled shrinkable sleeve, followed by wrapping the whole repair with self-bonding silicone tape.

Then you plug the connector back in and enjoy driving the car.

More on looking up the proper repair-wire part number is here, which is a link I found here (under Electrical Wiring Diagram), which has more links and info about wiring repair that you will probably want to read.

 

It shouldn't be difficult. When you look in the electrical wiring diagram you see something like this (example only, this isn't the connector you're looking for!):



So if you see that the repair wire part number is 82998-24400 (example only, not your part!), you go to a Toyota dealer and at the parts counter you give that number and they either go get the repair wire for you or they tell you it'll be in tomorrow morning.

As you can see, the diagram you find also gives you other information you also need, like how the locking mechanism in the housing works so you can release the old terminals, and also the part numbers of the crimp sleeves you should use for splicing the repair wires to your harness.

You should still review the other links about wire-harness repair that you find ☛ here ☚ for other information on the approved ways of splicing and protecting your splices from the weather.

That simplifies things. It's like having 6 repair wires already popped into a connector housing, and for less money than 6 repair wires at the dealer. If you replace the whole thing then you might not need to figure out how to release old terminals—you could just use the replacement connector as-is, though you would have to make splices in all six wires.

If a few of the wires are not gnawed, you're probably still better off keeping those, and using your spare connector as a source of repair wires for the gnawed ones. So release the gnawed old terminals from your old connector, and release that many ungnawed terminals from your spare one, and clip those wires a few inches back and splice those as repair wires to your existing harness and pop them into the right positions of the existing connector. That way you're making fewer splices that could be new points of failure.

Also, by cannibalizing a spare harness like that, you can preserve the color codes for the wires (which also helps you make sure you pop them back into the right connector positions). Repair wires you get from the dealer are whatever wire colors the factory had extra that day.

I wouldn't use insulation displacement connectors, especially not on connections as critical as the resolver and weather-exposed. More at All that squishes is not crimped. | PriusChat

Maybe it's a little fiddly to strip insulation from the small wires, but I'd take some deep breaths and do it, and use parallel crimp splices the way Toyota recommends, as you'll be reading in the links above.