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