Ours is the Panasonic VX900 Double Din CD/Radio/Tape. Is that the same model as yours?

It's very sensitive when swapping discs (quite possibly the temperature or "feel" of them?) - it will baulk at most on initial loading but then play them after an eject/re-present.

Ours IS lowered on skyscraper-earthquake-proofing "springs". No head unit jumping however..... Is yours bolted in or in one of those tin cages?? (3/00)

The CD jumping seems like a common fault with factory Japanese headunits. I've had so many people wanting replacements for theirs due to the same fault. As car audio freak, I always try and point them into getting decent aftermarket headunits. Problem is that some people like to keep the cars 100% original. In my view I think it's actually better for Roadsters to go aftermarket, makes the car look like it's actually been in the hands of a owner rather than just off the boat ;-)

Another problem especially with the Roadsters is that there isn't much space for the stereo to live in, add a cowboy fitted FM expander placed in the already limited space and you have a recipe for an overheated lightly toasted headunit.

Go on.... get another headunit ;-) Oh yeah, food for thought. Did you know that some V-specials came with the Pioneer chrome headunits..... prone to going wrong as well and a replacement for these from Japan at trade price is around 140000Yen. BTW the exchange rate is around the 170-175 Yen to the Pound Sterling. Do the maths and wait for the wobbly knees ;-) (3/00)

When I was on the hunt for the standard Panasonic stereo for my Eunos Everyone I phoned up told me the CD player kept ejecting the CD's so I thought I ask on all the lists about repairing the player before I bought one that wasn't working...

I got the reply attached below from one of our American friends , who had the same problem. Hope this helps you in getting your CD player to work. I must point out that the CD player I eventually bought worked fine and is still doing so , hence I haven't tried this fix yet. So you can be the Guinea pig. This fix is the only reply I got from all the lists and it seems reasonable enough to me

The good news is that I was able to fix it for absolutely no cost. In the beginning I noticed was that there was a scraping sound (tick, tick tick) that seemed to be about the same frequency as a spinning CD. This was kind of annoying but otherwise the CD's played OK. Actually this only occurred with some CD's not all.

After a week or so the problem got worse to the point where no CD's would play properly at all. As you say, the unit hunted around for tracks, jumping all over the place playing the occasional brief few seconds of music before skipping again and never completely playing any passage of music. It was especially noticeable with CD's that I got form the municipal library that had labels stuck to them.

After a few days I tried again and the player refused to play any CD's at all. Every time one was inserted, it was spit out a few seconds later. I have met another Miata owner with exactly the same problem. I removed the CD unit and brought it to Matsushito (not too sure about the spelling) Electric here in Mississauga Ontario who is Panasonic, Technics etc. parent company.

They took a week to tell me that they had to replace the laser pickup thing and basically all the mechanical parts inside, as the parts were not available individually and could only be changed out as a unit. Cost was about $300 including labor. At this point I paid the $25 estimate fee and took it home feeling pretty discouraged. I wanted to keep the car original but it would be cheaper to just get an aftermarket CD player. Jeff Anderson who had done my OEM stereo upgrade told me that he didn't work on CD units so I decided to have a look inside myself before making a decision.

I removed the shift knob, console, heating/AC vents. black panel surrounding stereo etc. and pulled out the stereo and CD unit together and left all the wires connected.

The CD is fortunately on top of the stack and it's lid just pries off with no screws at all. I was able to insert a CD and watch what happens inside.

There is a rear hinged cover with a spring loaded centering pin that presses down on the CD. The CD seemed to have too much friction when I tried to rotate it by hand. It was clear to me that the hinged cover itself was dropping down too low and rubbing on the CD. If I lifted it carefully with tweezers the CD would start to play normally.

I looked around for a reason as to why this hinged cover was going down so far and found a little stop lever on the right hand side towards the back of the unit. At first I thought of bending this lever a bit to adjust the range of movement of the hinged cover. Then I saw the problem.

There is a little rubber pad which the lever contacts to cushion the action. It was glued on with sort of rubber cement and had slipped out of position with heat and time. I repositioned the rubber pad using tweezers as it is really impossible otherwise as things are a bit cramped in there. Worked like a charm after that. It seemed that CD's that were slightly warped or thicker due to the label thickness were susceptible at first and when the pad slipped away completely, all CD's were affected. I'm sure that more than a few OEM CD players went to landfill for the same reason. (3/00)

This isn't going to help you with your "head jumping" I'm afraid, but I have an original Clarion single disk CD player in my 96 Merlot SE (single DIN fitting)and it's absolutely superb. It's never jumped once (although I have only had the car for a fortnight!).

It would seem to suggest though, that the problem is either with the CD player itself, or something inherantly at fault with the double DIN mounting system. I am afraid you can't pin it on the hard ride! (3/00)

I fixed my Panasonic cd player quite simply, but it involves dismantling the unit. I had all the following symptons:
1. Skipping CD's, though some seemed to skip more than others (in general, older US made CD's I had were fine, newer ones more susceptible.
2. CD's refusing to load/eject/track (if I wanted to return to track 1, it was easier to eject and reload.

These got worse over time (when I first brought the car, it was fine for 6 months or so).

Sound familiar? I was all ready to junk it, until I came across a fix at: http://www.geocities.co.jp/MotorCity/3349/psf/cd/cd.html (its all in Japanese, and even with translingo, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but the piccies are useful pointers).

I decided to follow the fix, as it was fairly risk free (couldn't get any worse).

You'll need a fine cross head jewellers screwdriver,
a small flat head screwdriver (for levering operations),
fine pliers (tweezers/forceps help),
some silicone sealant,
clear methylated spirits (diluted to 70% in water),
optics safe solvent (I used isopropyl alcohol, but xylene is ok (AKA Wynns Carbrettor Intake cleaner; we use xylene safely here to clean very fine optics)).

You are best to work on a clean well lit area, as there are quite a few small screws involved and one or two springs to unclip/clip. The fix is similar to the one outlined below, but instead of the pad slipping out of position, it had in fact become sticky over time with dirt and the adhesive glue used penetrating through the felt material.

Dismantle the CD player; the main casing is prised off (at the tabs handily marked "open"). The front panel also unclips off as a unit. Get the unit stripped down as far as the pictures show.

There are 2 little springs you'll need to remove along the way. Panasonic use a gungy black material to anchor the springs. The sealant is a good substitute and greatly aids reassembly. The springs go back into place a lot easier than it looks, but be careful not to lose them.

With the guts of the CD player exposed, time to give everything a good clean. Clean all the metal bits up and the felt pads with the meths. The felt pad will initially become more sticky than before; thats ok, its just excess glue being solubilized. Use a tissue to mop up the excess solvent (+ glue) on the pad, and allow to dry. Clean the laser lens with the IPA/xylene only. Meths has a habit of stripping off optical coatings.

Reassemble the player. With the CD player in bits, you'll notice how pointless it is for people to worry about how to mount the player in the dash, with bits of foam or rubber. The CD player bit is actually mounted on little air filled bushings which seem to do a good job of dampening out vibrations.

Reassemble the unit back into the dash; just screw it into position as the designers intended. Its also worthwhile checking whether the metal bar in the back of the radio/cd combo is in the right place. Some importers mix and match tape players and CD players on cars. On tape only cars, the bar is on the cassette unit, with the cd, its on the cd unit and not on the cassette unit. Worthwhile checking this.

Since carrying this out in September, I have had only 1 or 2 skips, and thats when hitting a really deep pothole, and the player always tracks afterwards successfully, something it could never do before. CD's always eject/load first time, and I can track up or down fine. (3/00)

I have a Sony CD changer too, but it has never been any bother. I did have one for a while that wouldn't play recordable CD's so got wrid of it asap.

The only thing I can think of is the turny thing on each end of the changer, it is for altering how the damping mechanism works - depending on how it is mounted. i.e. If mounted vertically it would be turned one way, or horizontally the other way (AFAIK there are increments in between on some models too). They have a large arrow that doubles up as a the screw driver slot for altering it. This must be pointing the right way according to how you have it mounted. Try that.

If that doesn't work, how about having the lens cleaned, although it shouldn't be too difficult to get to yourself without even taking it apart, use a soft cloth or cotton bud with some alcohol or such (not entirely sure what the correct stuff to use is, check with someone on that..) and clean any fluff or debris that may have accumulated on the lens. (3/00)

I had a similar thing recently when taking a look into my old knackered CD changer. This had a similar problem with the cd not spinning up. I re-soldered the connections for the motor although I have also managed to track down a replacement motor from a very old CD ROM drive :) I have also changed the small disk that the CD sits on that is driven by the motor. This also came from an old CD ROM drive.

During my tinkering, I noticed that my player would spit out the disk when not spinning up and try the next in the cartridge. If the disk did spin up it would try to read the disk information but give up, this was due to the CD platform not being level thus making the disk move up and down in relation to the laser when spun. Basically make sure that the drive motor is trying to spin the disk, maybe give the disk a little nudge when it tries to play it, this may give it enough to spin & play it. If this does not work then I would say the motor is knackered. If it does spin up then as with my changer I would think the little platform was slipping on the drive shaft, this is very difficult to sort but with a little patience and a lot of luck it is possible, I used a little superglue to fix the disk to the spindle.

I have stripped a few cdrom drives looking for spares and have found most use stepper motors ? to spin the disk (probably due to the multi speeds, Single speed drives are like rocking horse now unfortunately but there may be a motor available from RS or similar. (4/00)

Well, initially, I had the same problem as you; after taking it apart, for the first 5 minutes it wouldn't load anything, but then it settled down, and since then, everything has been hunky dory.

Did you use a bit of mastic to resecure the 2 small springs that you had to disengage; on mine, Panasonic had used some. When you cleaned the felt pads, afterwards did they feel sticky. I cleaned them using some clear meths; the solvent solubilized some excess glue. A dab around with some tissue sort of mopped it up. I checked before I reassembled that everything was dry and clean. There isn't any way you could disengage the motor, as you're working from the other side. There is a bit of circuit board you have to dislodge, and I suppose its possible to snag a connection there. On some cd players, I've noticed that the laser its self can jam up; moving it down its ratchet usually does the trick (but at your own risk) (4/00)

My Alpine CD changer seems to skip more than it should. I can take the odd skip, but on anything other than motorways and big main roads, I seem to suffer a skip every time I drive over the slightest hint of a pothole. The changer has always been like this (it's about two years old) and it is supposedly a good make. Am I expecting too much or is something wrong ?

If the latter, has it been installed incorrectly ? It is in the boot, mounted on the left hand side and positioned with the cassette facing upwards, so that the CDs sit vertically. The cassette seems to be cushioned against side to side movements (ie you can physically move it against springs), but not against vertical movements (you can't push it up and down once it has clicked into position). Is this the problem ? Or do I need to get my shock absorbers checked (the car is nine years' old, but has only done 28,000 miles). (8/00)

Alpine are good but I don't know about the changer locations - I've only ever had a single slot CD tuner from them. I don't think it's your shockers but they can go anywhere from 30k miles. Sounds more like the changer is faulty or hasn't been set to mount vertically (you usually have to set a switch to say vertical or horizontal.) My latest CD/Tuner has only skipped once so far but the hole I hit made the whole car shake - thought I'd knackered something.

Is it easy enough to try it mounted horizontally?? Maybe it just needs a clean - my original Jap CD player skipped and I was told cleaning would fix it. (8/00)

Sounds odd that it has no vertical movement damping ! My pioneer has some freedom of movement in all directions and is like yours mounted in in the vertical position. It has not skipped yet due to potholes or dodgy road surfaces.

I think most if not all CD changers have some settings for the angle the units are mounted, mine has and the Blaupunkt I had before this also had. Make sure yours is set to the vertical mounting position this may affect the damping directions although I would think this a little odd as damping on all axis would be the best to reduce/remove skipping.

New shocks would be harder rather than softer so I don't think it is a shock issue, I have Koni's set on semi hard at the moment (1/2 turn) and have also run on full hard with no problems from the CD changer. (8/00)