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Old 12-31-2006, 06:12 PM
pkavalon97 pkavalon97 is offline
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Re: 1996 Avalon 3 CD Changer

Quote:
Originally Posted by Diamond_Jim
I also have a '96 Avalon that did the same thing. I just left the damn thing sticking out for a good three weeks, and one day I pressed the eject button, and it retracted! "Cool!" I thought. No. As soon as I pressed eject again, it stuck out again.

So, I left it sticking out for about three more weeks. Until one day while waiting to pick my wife up, I got bored and REALLY started investigating. I took a long ratcheting tie wrap and slid it along the right side of the mechanism (I honestly don't remember if it was on top or underneath) and managed to release the 3 disk cartridge and leave the mechanism still sticking out. The cardridge had all three disks in it.

Then all I had to do was reach in with my finger and "trick" the player into thinking the cartridge was still there, pressed eject, and it retracted "empty handed". I popped open the little door and looked inside, and guess what? There was a disk still in there! I pulled it out with a pair of hemostats, and ejected the mechanism, and now it works like a charm!

I think what happed to cause the problem was the changer (for whatever reason) ejected and left a disk in the changer. Someone put another disk in the cardridge to fill the empty slot, and when they inserted it, the player still had a disk inside and it got "confused" and locked up.

WARNING WARNING WARNING
Please not that I did NOT force the cartridge out of the mechanism while it was sticking out of the dash. If you try this, I don't think good things would happen. The manual SPECIFICALLY says NOT to EVER FORCE the cardridge out.

I can't specifically tell you what I did to pop out the cartridge. All I know was I was sliding the zip-tie in and out along the edge of the cartridge and it released the cartridge. I hope this helps anyone else who has experienced this problem.
" I hope this helps anyone else who has experienced this problem."

Wow, thanks for this one.
Worked like a charm, I was thinking about pulling the whole unit out of the dash to fix this problem.
I'm not even sure at what point the zip-tie caused the release of the unit but all of a sudden it was loose.
I never would have thought of this.
Diamond Jim, if you are still out there, thanks a lot.

ETA: After the unit was free I did this a little differently.
I took the 3 disks out of the cartridge (is that what it's called?) and put it back in empty.
Then I pushed eject and the disk that was in the player came out no sweat.
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