New to the forum, and to car repair in general, so please try to use small words in your answer

My 98 disco (260,000 miles, whew) has a problem with starting inconsistently and I am looking for any theories before I start tearing in to it. When I turn the key to start it, I can hear the ignition sound but it takes a random number of key turns until it finally catches and stays going (sometimes its the first try, sometimes as many as five). This wasn't a problem for me and I considered it a quirk that comes with buying a used car off of craigslist, but this summer I found a correlation where if the weather was unusually hot (90+ degrees) then the car would never start and would eventually stop making the ignition noise and would just click if I turned the key. After around 30 minutes or so of waiting this problem would go away and it would be back to the roulette of key turns. Just wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem or if there is some easy fix I can look in to?

 

start with checking all the battery cables and their connections, follow the ground cable from the battery>to the >fenderwell> to the frame, check for rusted cable connections.
a poor ground will cause all the symptoms you list

 

Thanks for the quick response, I'll put it on my list of things to check this weekend. I'm also going to go ahead and replace all the spark plugs.