Most of the time - I'd say above 50% (maybe) I have no issues. I can start the car and it'll automatically start playing. BUT -

-Sometimes the CD player will say "initializing" and it'll be a few minutes before it finishes loading and starts playing. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for this behavior.
-Sometimes the player won't play the CD, instead saying "bad disc" when I know for a fact my discs are good. It has ejected them in the past, only to have me reinsert them and for them to play just fine.
-Sometimes the player will skip when I first start the car, but after a few rewinds to the beginning it will play just fine.

I'm not sure if these are all part of the same issue but I'm hoping they can be rectified. Thanks for your input.

 

Weak laser, dirty laser, marginal disc (which may play fine on a player with a stronger laser).

 

When mine started doing similar things it was only a short time before it wouldn't play/load/eject any discs. I ended up pulling it out and tearing it completely apart to get the discs out and replacing it with an aftermarket unit. Only problem with that was I could never get the sub-woofer to work - guessing it was a power of/off wire that I couldn't track down.

 

The amp wire is Gray/Black behind the stereo. It will turn on if just jumpered to switched 12v but that will be at reduced power, ideally it needs 6V (the factory stereo uses a rising voltage on that line to reduce the amp output to prevent clipping). I posted elsewhere here that 2x 1000ohm resistors can be used as a voltage tap to give the 6V required - but easy to connect the Gray/Black to the power antennae output that is common on most head units. See the factory wiring below.



Here is what I made using 2x 1000ohm resistors:



50:50 voltage splitter, 12V across the outside terminals (12V one side and GND the other, you can tap 6V from the centre terminal.

 

Would a lens cleaner work in this unit?

I don't think it's the disc because it seems to do it with all my discs. It's not doing the skipping thing much anymore, I assume that's because of the warmer weather but I could be wrong.

 

Possibly but then I have never found those discs very effective in any kind of player.

 

I have found that after replacing the battery (which had a bad cell) the "initializing" problem has stopped completely, I still do get skips occasionally though which can be fixed by switching to the radio and back to the CD player. So yeah, still a weird problem but it has workarounds I can deal with.

 

All brands, all models of in-dash multi-disc CD players are failure prone. Some go long than others, but there is a lot of stuff crammed into a little space and some parts are just a bit too tiny to live long. "06 Escape and '01 Lexus, both died--one with Adele trapped inside, it was horrible....

 

Our '02 had the 6 disc radio and it had issues.....wouldn't play or eject. One day I tried it and was able to eject all the discs.

Never had a CD in it after that.

 

Sounds like I have a quality CD player, I guess I'll see how long it lasts then.