Hi everyone its been a while since the last update on this thread so I thought of coming here and giving everyone an update.
First of all I am happy to report the issue has been resolved! It has been over 6 months of driving daily with a CEL that came on and off. Plus the difficulty of starting the car in certain situations but kept on going somehow. So towards the last few weeks I went to auto electrical places in hopes of getting my wiring tested according to documentation and standard troubleshooting for this code from Jeep - specifically the wires going in and out of the throttle body. But only had some of them say sorry they cannot diagnose this car at all and had another guy keep the car for the day and say their scanner tool cannot connect to my car with full functionality (secure cable issue 2018 onwards). He kept saying it is illegal by Jeep to do this as apparently only a few scanners or the Jeep official one can scan/make changes on these 2018+ models. I told him I could do more with my BT adapter and JScan and just left. This workshop also told me I should just get the throttle body swapped instead of spending time looking at wiring because they said it would be super rare for the wiring on a 2018 to be deteriorated anywhere as it is young and they would expect this to happen in much older vehicles. And yes the connectors whenever I have inspected looked new.
Then finally I said f$#@ it I am going to take the risk - i.e. not testing cables and going for throttle body swap straight away because I had enough and the clock was ticking to the day this car would go into limp mode should the throttle body fail completely. By this time I had enough data and experience to say it has to be the throttle body (the longest testing and observations anyone could do). Went to the first Jeep garage mechanic I spoke to 6 months ago who had said without any hesitation this code is talking about the throttle body position sensor just a swap fixes it.
Got the throttle body swapped for a good condition used one he had available (I know the recommendation was to go for brand new but I had no guarantee this was going to fix it and was a gamble) and guess what - it was the throttle body all this time! The CEL went away and car started smoothly. Been running for almost two weeks now and touchwood it has been good. Also I can confirm now there is no requirement for a driver to wait for 1 and half minutes after shutting down the engine before they could start it up again as that was my case for the last 6 months. Now I can turn off the engine after a drive and almost instantly start it up (in case I really need to) again with no issues because the throttle body is not hunting for position as the sensor had gone bad previously. Also many Jeep guys said the car should be able to crank up there is no waiting required. So yeah I have been CEL free and no choking while starting anymore. I am so thankful my original throttle body gave me so much time without failing completely on me.
As a safety measure I asked the workshop to give me my original throttle body so I can keep it as a spare in case something happens - as I know this throttle body would still work if swapped back with just the electrical sensor gremlin. Remember how you guys wanted me to check the inside plastic gears of the original throttle body? I finally got the chance to look inside and it looks brand new! Not even dust or any cogs damaged. Pictures attached. So even if I was successful taking out the throttle body to inspect, that would have left us with nothing. This was purely the position sensor circuit fried issue. It somehow managed to work all these months with limited functionality which was remarkable.
I would like to thank everyone here again for their time and efforts in trying to solve this mystery. I learnt a lot of valuable information about these engines during these last few months and this was a tricky one - no doubt! Hopefully the information on this thread could help anyone who may experience a situation like this or similar
Interior of the original throttle body with the P02E8 issue without any cleaning:
