92 Civic, all electricity dies, comes back

Hi,

The car is a 92 Civic EX. My wife had reported a couple of times that
it failed to crank, but I was assuming the clutch switch was being a
little two picky. It's now happening to me, but it's not the clutch
switch.

When you go to start the car, there is electric power, warning lights
come on, etc. When you first try to engage the starter, everything
dies, as if the battery has been disconnected (or a fusible link
blown). The first time it happened, I was looking around for a main
relay that needed reset, but it reset on its own (probably less than a
minute). It's now happened a couple of more times. The power is
actually totally disconnected (for example, the radio pre-sets are
gone, no lights, no nothing).

I look at the circuit diagram, and see an "electronic load detector"
and a couple of big fuses, but from what I read about that on usenet,
this doesn't seem to be the failure mode. I search (usenet) for "main
relay" and that seems to be the PGM relay, which has a whole 'nother
set of symptoms.

I've got a pretty crappy manual (chilton's) and it's not much help.

Any ideas or advice?

thanks,

Hank

 

--------------------------------

Have you heard a 'snap' under the hood when this happens? It's often the
chassis end of the ground cable (black) from the battery. Corrosion on a
'92 gets in between the bolt and chassis. Also, unbolt the battery
terminals and inspect. Coat with vaseline and put it all back together.

'Curly'

 

Yeah, your symptoms indicate that the battery can't push that much
juice through the system, so it must be something pretty early up the
chain. Could be
1) the battery itself
2) The connections to the battery terminals
3) the connections to the chassis or (rarely) the fusebox.

 

Thanks,

It's actually pretty embarrassing. The positive terminal was loose.
I had cleaned and vasolined them about a year ago, and tightened the
clamp down. The clamp was as tight as it would go, but it had slid up
enough (along the tapered post) that I could wiggle it by hand.

The first time it didn't work I had looked in the underhood fuse box.
When I found no relays there I looked at the negative terminal, and
wiggled it. I then asked her to try it again, and it started, so I
never even grabbed onto the positive terminal.

Thanks again,

 

My patented methodology when faced with a car that won't crank:
1) get something heavy
2) give the battery terminals a whack
3) if that doesn't fix it, give the starter and/or solenoid a whack