CD stuck in stereo

[jreiter]

So, I put a few CDs into the 4-disc changer in my 4runner, and it wouldn't read any of them. So I told it to eject them, and now they are stuck in there. They won't eject, and the nav screen face is in the tilted down position and stuck there. I can't get it to go back up, and the CDs won't come out. Anyone run into this problem before? Have a solution for me?

 

[OCMike]

I used to have a problem with CD's with labels getting stuck in my Mac Book. I took a business card and stuck it in the slot so it rested over the CD and pressed the eject button. Not sure if that will work in a changer though.

 

[jreiter]

I'll give that a shot. Can't be worse than it is now. Right now the face plate is stuck in the down position, and the unit is buzzing and whirring and clicking as though it's trying to eject. The discs I used were simple CDRs with no labels, so I know it's not a label issue. It couldn't read the discs, either, for what it's worth.

 

[OCMike]

I did some Googling and see that someone else unplugged the unit and plugged it back in and it ejected the stuck CDs

 

[westwind77]

Have a solution for me?

Take it to the dealer I know it can be a PIA, but it should be noted so if problems happen after the warranty is over you can prove it is an ongoing problem. Would suck to have to pay to replace the nav unit at your cost at 40k miles!

 

[jreiter]

Take it to the dealer I know it can be a PIA, but it should be noted so if problems happen after the warranty is over you can prove it is an ongoing problem. Would suck to have to pay to replace the nav unit at your cost at 40k miles!

Definitely. I plan to take it by tomorrow morning before work. As OCMike mentioned, I might also try pulling the fuse briefly to see if the power cycle helps nudge it along. It's weird that no one else has had this problem. There was nothing special about these discs. Just some CDRs I had been using in my other car for a long time, and they worked fine. No labels or stickers or anything funny. The 4runner, though, won't read them or eject them. Very strange.

 

[gamerc]

I had this issue in my wife's Camry XLE. I ended up getting a replacement unit courtesy of the warranty. However, it had to be ordered and took several weeks to get there. The service manager and I actaully replaced it in the service bay in about 15 mins.

 

[TTown]

I haven't had this problem, but I do keep hearing my CD changer making noises as if it is shuffling the CDs looking for the next available CD. I don't have any CDs in my changer. I can understand this if it was the first time I put a CD in, but it seems to keep doing it.

 

[jreiter]

I went to my Toyota dealer this morning, and they are going to order a replacement nav unit for me. Hopefully it gets here sooner rather than later. My whole stereo is effectively broken until it gets replaced. It's stuck in FM mode, and I can't turn it off. That, and the screen is in the down position, so I can't see anything on it.

That being said, does anyone know which fuse controls the stereo/nav system? I looked at both the inside and engine bay fuse blocks, but I don't see anything labeled "nav" or "stereo" or anything of the sort.

 

[fxoffroad]

That being said, does anyone know which fuse controls the stereo/nav system? I looked at both the inside and engine bay fuse blocks, but I don't see anything labeled "nav" or "stereo" or anything of the sort.

:rtfm:

Section 4-03 in your owner's manual.

 

[jreiter]

:rtfm:
Section 4-03 in your owner's manual.

<sigh> I did read the manual. After looking over the fuse boxes and not seeing it, I pulled out my manual. I must've overlooked it. Thanks for the section number.

 

[jreiter]

Just an update in case anyone else runs into this in the future. Pulling the fuses for the headunit to power cycle it didn't fix it. However, I noticed that after starting the vehicle (or at least turning the power on), there were a few seconds where the screen was waiting for input. I immediately pressed the Load/Eject button on the dash, and that closed up the screen so I could start using the head unit normally again. The CDs are still stuck in there, but as long as I don't try to eject them or load other ones, it keeps working fine.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for a replacement to arrive at my dealer.

 

[jreiter]

The dealer replaced the headunit today, but they overlooked a critical detail. They installed the new nav unit, powered it up, and it said to insert the map DVD. They didn't have the map DVD. Looks like the nav units do not come with a map DVD. It's a separate part number that must be ordered separately. Additionally, they couldn't take the DVD out of my old nav unit since the disc eject mechanism is what's broken on my old one, so the discs are stuck in it.

So, now I'm waiting for them to order a new map DVD. In the meantime, the unit won't work at all (nav or audio) since it requires a map disc to be functional. Doh!

 

[OCMike]

Ahh. So it was the eject button. Also odd that they don't have a way for you to download the Map DVD and burn it to a disc. Hope it doesn't take too long to get it up and running again.

 

[jreiter]

It's not actually the eject button, but rather the mechanism inside the unit that does the disc moving and ejecting. I could hit the eject button, and it would start clicking and whirring trying to eject the discs, but it could never get them out.

 

[westwind77]

I'm surprised the maps aren't internally stored in the unit. Figured it would be like most navigation units these days. I can understand needing to load a disk to transfer maps/POI then ejecting it and using it on the new one. I guess they need to a way to justify the high cost for the map updates though!

 

[jreiter]

Most dvd-based nav units now days unfortunately still rely on the DVD. The 4runner unit does, for sure, as you can hear it constantly accessing the dvd while you are entering addresses, searching through POIs, etc. That's one of the reasons it's so slow compared to something like a little portable Garmin which has everything loaded into flash. I had a Pioneer AVIC-D2 nav unit in another car, and it also relied on the DVD in the same way. There are some hard drive-based units which might copy everything to the hard drive, but I believe most still rely on a DVD, as archaic as is might seem. Seems like now days they'd just stick 16 gigs or so of flash memory in the thing and copy it all to there, right? It'd be cheap enough to do so, especially with flash prices so low. Definitely a more elegant solution than either relying on a DVD or a hard drive. (Hard drives take a real beating in cars, especially off-road vehicles!)