cold starts, stops, starts, stops, starts, stops...

[condorw]

this is the third time this has happened in the past few weeks.
brisk morning but no deep freeze yet in baltimore.
crank the car, it fires up after 4-5 cranks for about 1 sec then stops.
this continued for like 20 cycles and eventually it started up for good.
it was normal for the rest of the day, no codes, no rough idling, nothing.

i'm leaning towards the fuel / air / senors but wondered if this has
ever happened to anyone else?

[TC3modena]

something similar has been happening with my 96' 328 with 100k miles, i'll say once a month it'll do it to me, go to start it and it wont fire, i'll keep trying for about a minute and then walk away cuz i dont want to kill my battery, and eventually it'll start, then it wont happen for another month, 2day it happened again, couldnt get it started for over an hour, ended up spraying starting fluid in my intake to get it started, and when it did start, my rpms didnt go past 1k, and the best way to describe the sound it made was it literally sounded like a diesel, ran for about 5 seconds and then died, im puttin my money on the fuel system, but who knows, could be anything, also BTW these all have been on mild days

[Mi3vEa3n6]

any CEL?, check for vaccum leaks also. does it run rough or does it run normal and just die?

[TC3modena]

once mine starts its fine

[Cyrix2k]

I live in westminster and haven't noted any problems.