so on a cold day, start it up and just take it easy right?

 

Yes, once the car is up to temp... have at it.

 

When I start up my 01 225 when its cold, it usually idles a lil high (around 1100) for about 2 minutes...i just assumed that since its getting older (80k) and its cold outside, that it just needs a lil warm up time before its ready to go. Once it gets a lil warmed up though, it goes down to regular idle and always runs perfect...dont know if anyone else experiences this or not, I was slightly concerned at first, but i do not see a problem with this...i just chalk it up to needing to warm up a lil bit.

 

That's the normal cold start sequence. You should also hear the secondary air pump kick in to blow additional air into the exhaust to help the catalytic converter deal with the rich start mixture.

 

Should note the secondary air pump makes a very scary sound if you don't know what it is!
My first thoughts were a broken belt or something grinding.

 

O thank god. Cause i was doing alot of city driving today, about 45 minutes and the temp gauge showed about 1 tick to the right. This has happened to me before and i paniced but today, i was more prepared, i checked water temp via HVAC and it read 97C. So i believe that equals to about 206-207F. Idk why the stock temp gauge would move more past center if its only around 210F. I guess they want you to be paranoid and take the car to the dealer to spend money fixing something that doesnt needs to be fixed lol.