[juice23]

Hi all, I have a bone stock 2012 m3 that I bought brand new. The car is 10.5 years old, bought in Oct of 2012. Needless to say, I adore this car. I have never been able to commit to anything, except this car, and I have 0 intentions of ever getting rid of it. I have no idea why I feel this way about his car, but I do.

Here in Chicago, there have been really, really bad cold spells the last couple of years. In Sept of 2021, I had the TBA service work done after my actuators went bad. In Jan 2022, I began to have issues again with the car when the temps dropped below 0 degrees F. The car would go into limp mode and the exhaust would smell horrible. There was also a distinct smell of fuel that I never smelled before. The car would stay in limp mode until it was turned off and restarted. The colder the weather was, the longer it stayed in limp mode before returning to normal.

When Spring came around in 2022, the issue disappeared only to return recently in Dec of 2022 when the temps dropped again below 0 degrees F. I decided to take action:
1. Replaced battery thinking this was a power issue. I had never replaced the battery in the car. It was the original battery from factory.
2. I thought that solved the issue, until...
3. ... I had been out of town for a few days and had not started the car for a total of 3 days. Upon starting the car, the car just cranked, and cranked, and cranked, and then finally started, but it was a really bad idle. The car was rumbling, shaking, and exhaust was toxic. The car went into limp mode and threw codes. I immediately turned the car off thinking the engine was going to blow. I connected a code reader and the codes that the car was throwing were: 2B28 and 2B5C. These are throttle valve associated, but there is no way that my TBAs are bad given that they were just replaced.

4. I restarted the car and let it run for a minute. Then I turned it off. After a minute, I restarted and BOOM, it started normal, normal idle, no toxic exhaust, no smell of fuel.

As I write this, my car is at Performance Eurowerks getting fuel injectors and spark plugs replaced. I should be doing this work on my own but they are a good shop and they did my TBA so I'm fine with them doing it.

If anyone has any comments or input, I would appreciate those and I will update this post when I get the car back.