About 1800 miles into a 4k road trip with 6000# off the back and man is this truck great. Set cruise at 70 mph over the Divide, no problems whatsoever, except one pesky glitch that happened about 50 miles in.

I put a CD into the changer and it just ate the thing, won't spit it out and won't play any of the others. My unit removal "coat hangers" are at home, they didn't make the list of items to bring along.

Just seeing if anyone knows a trick besides smacking the dash to get that magazine freed up or had encountered this problem in the past. My father-in-law was jamming a credit card in the slot, didn't have the heart to stop him, figured couldn't make it much worse.

It won't switch to other discs and just reads "CD Error" Figured it was worth a shout to the FTE brotherhood.

BTW, Wyoming has very few radio stations...

 

Funny you should mention coat hangers. I think I cut one up and bent the pieces to get the deck out of the dash.

Once that's done and your home, you can shove a double-din head unit in its place, one with an SD card. CDs have 11-12 songs. My SD card holds 1100-1200 songs. No moving parts, no disks to carry, no skipping on railroad tracks, and no swapping. I can hit play and that's it until I return home... with no repeats.

Why double-din for a little SD card? Backup camera display.

 

Upon switching out my disc changer I found there was a cd stuck on top of the magazine. The player did not indicate any cds were in there. I gave it to my friend, tore it apart and got the cd out. He says it works fine. My advice- I'm with Tugly, mine is a pioneer nav dvd, the back up cam is excellent.

 

If u use one of those visor cd holders, it causes the cds to bow a little usually. That helps to it to get hung up. I have used a pocket knife to persuade on back out. Like he others, I quit carrying cds in favor of anything else. Our car uses a memory stick for music and I use the iphone in my work truck. My personal truck still needs radio update(it still has a cassette player in it).

 

The OEM six disc on mine did the same. At first it was trouble with blank discs burned at home getting stuck, but soon any disc could refuse to eject. My wife doggedly punched buttons on a boring stretch of road in Idaho, around 45 minutes of working it, the radio grudgingly giving up discs, until it realized it was beat and spat out all of them. Credit cards and other tools did not help.

If your plans for the radio are not too elaborate just stop by a Walmart for the night, pick a unit you like and slap it in that evening. You might need the removal tool and if you go single DIN the mount kit with the Skoal shelf. Double DIN means trimming the opening a tad and that complicates the install. A unit with USB port or better yet a memory slot will avoid the CD problems in the future. I leave the CDs at home and have the music on a 8GB Micro SD in a USB port on the new head unit.

 

Use the busted CD player as a springboard to a new head unit plus backup cam...this place is full of great advice! I was kind of leaning towards that anyhow, so thanks for the nudge.

I'll just surf FM radio for the next couple thousand miles till I get home!

 

Or...... you could stop at walmart, pick up a cheap Bluetooth/fm transmitter and run Pandora radio from your cell.

 

Short of replacing the unit ...

When I bought my truck, it indicated that all the slots were empty. I managed to get one disc in and have it play, but erratically. Usually would give me an error. When my batteries died and I replaced them, the first thing the head unit did when I started it the next time was to indicate that there were three discs installed. I ran through each slot and ejected not only the disc I put in, but two the previous owner had apparently given up for lost.

Short answer is removing power to the unit (including backup power) to reset it. Either pull the plug on the back of the unit (if you pull it out of the dash), or might find a couple of fuses that let it reset. Or, just pull both positive battery cables and let it sit for an hour or so.

(Banging on the dash would often revive mine and make it puke out discs, but that quit working right before I replaced the head unit).

 

Those dang stock units. My truck came with a JVC deck in it. But, another time, in another place, I had an Excursion. Very dusty environment. Windows would not roll down and it was miserable hot. Not a radio station for 100 miles and that will just make you angry when it's 115 out and the a/c don't work.

Anyhow, I used a couple of Allen keys to pull the deck. Found a similar situation when I opened it up. Lots of partially digested CDs, much like the contents of the shark stomach on Jaws. I cleaned it out with a can of compressed air, put everything back together, and loaded up a few burned discs. Worked well for another few days until some brainiac co-worker decided he didn't like my music and tried to eject the discs and load his own. Back to step 1 all over again. Except this time, on reassembly, I crazy glued every button on the stereo except volume and the disc forwards. Didn't have any more problems with people ejecting my discs. Or driving "my" Excursion. I guess they didn't like my music.

Was that even applicable? Hell, I dunno. I can't sleep and I'm apparently feeling chatty.