Not starting in the morning, rough idle

[brokenbimmer533]

This only happens in the morning. When my car is cold from sitting over night it sometimes wont start. It will turnover but no sputtering at all. Smells like fuel after a couple minutes of cranking. So I find a different ride to work, come home about 4pm and it will start right up. Previously the two times this has happened, the tank was almost empty. So I have just been keeping my tank full but this morning, even with the tank full, it still wouldnt start. Came home from work and it started. 32 degrees this morning 34 after work.
Checked so far: All seemed to be functioning
spark plugs,wires
cleaned afm
cleaned icv
checked fuel pump relay and fuse


The rough idle started this week. Stays high while warming up and once its warm it drops down to around 550 - 600 and the whole car shudders when sitting at a stop light.

When I pulled the AFM smelled pretty bad of gas. Looked in the intake boot and saw puddles of gas in the ridges in the intake boot. This makes me think the engine is flooding itself when trying to start in the mornings

Ideas?

Thanks
-Nate

[RobertK]

What year / model?

[brokenbimmer533]

Sorry forgot about that. Its an 86 325e. All stock.

[jlevie]

The cold start valve could be bad, but fuel in the intake after a failure to start on this engine could just be from normal operation of the cold start valve. My first suspicion would be that there are intake leaks and I'd want to see a smoke test done to start with. There are other possibilities, but until intake leaks are ruled out it makes sense to pursue those.

[brokenbimmer533]

Smoke tester is 499 from napa. Bentley has a procedure to check the cold start valve so I was gunna do that before I take it in on Monday for a smoke test. The procedure says to unplug the ignition control unit but I cant seem to find it. It says it should be right next to the fuse box but its not. Where is this unit?

[brokenbimmer533]

Pulled cold start valve and tried to start the engine. It operated like it should when cold. Drove it around a bit until warm. Did the same test and the cold start didnt dump any fuel in. So that is operating just fine.