So I just got a CLD-D703 player off eBay today. When I plugged it in, turned it on, and hit OPEN, the screen read "OPEN" as normal, but the tray never opened, and I couldn't even hear any motors at all. So I opened the player up, tried pressing OPEN again, and the only response I got was from the front display (no movement or noise at all from the laser or anything else). Any suggestions?

So the tray load motor does not budge at all or make any noise? As I recall, on that model the load motor is located at the front right underside of the tray.

Do you get the typical setting and resetting of the laser assembly when turned off and on? Does the display ever read CLOSE after reading OPEN? Or does it read NO DISC at any point? Usually what I check in this kind of situation first is if the tray itself is off track or somehow obstructed. Can you manually move the tray forward without too much difficulty when player is unplugged?

Then, if the tray will move forward manually without difficulty and with the plug unplugged, I'll put it into an open position, then plug in the player and turn it on again to see if it will close on it's own, or with a teeny bit of assistance, just to see if the load motor is operating.

At worst, if it has some serious problem, you ask for your money back or most of it back. If the ebay listing said NO RETURNS, but indicated it was a working player, you apparently can get Paypal to refund your money without having to send it back. Or at least that's what a bunch of sellers have been complaining about on the ebay forum boards.

Well originally the laser assembly wasn't doing that resetting thing, but I just tried it again and it did just that. When I hit OPEN this time it read open and sounded as if it was trying to push the tray out,but eventually it just gave up and read "CLOSE". The tray doesn't move up or down at all when it's doing this. Also, I can't get the tray to budge an inch manually (with my hands)

There seems to be a slight snip in the orange cable that connects the assembly to that spinning device that is used for side switching. And I have a Marantz LV-510 and a Mitsubishi M-V8000 I don't mind sacrificing for parts if it comes to that.

Try this 1st before anything else: Grab the upper disc clamp assembly right where it connects to the lower clamp ring and see if they seem to be stuck together. Sometimes in shipping the upper clamp magnet almost seems to get "glued" to the lower clamp from jostling, and needs to be pulled apart for release. If they are stuck tightly, the tray cannot be freed to open since a major part of the opening system is the separating of the clamp rings as well, and you most likely would not be able to move the tray manually either.

If this seems to be the case then, with the player plugged in and off, pull the upper clamp apart from the lower clamp, and then turn on the player and press open while holding them apart. The tray ought to open at that point. If this does the trick, then you basically only need to clean very well the tray load belt and its corresponding pulleys, or even replace the belt, so that there's enough belt tension to always release the clamping devices and open the tray.

If that's not the problem, those symptoms could indicate these possible problems:

1. Load belt is slipping or weak and cannot carry enough tension to overcome the normal friction of the load tray and assembly.

2. The disc tray was jarred off track and needs to be reset.

3. There is an obstruction causing the disc tray to not move.

So I tried opening it with the upper clamp removed and I had the same problem. How should I test for the other possible problems?

I expected a stuck tray problem possibly because you could not budge the tray manually. Normally you shouldbe able to open the tray manually

Sadly, this can only be done by visual inspection of the tray and underside of ot.

You have to get a good bright flashlight and look all around, in the gearing at the front, and under the tray to see what you can see that might be blocking its moving. Like a piece of broken plastic, a wire that got stuck, a gear that's broken, something at the rear of the tray holding it, etc. You also need to check and see that there's nothing jamming the gearing and sliding pin assemblies that all work at the same time as loading the tray. I usually check these kinds of things by jostling these mechanisms and assemblies back and forth bit by bit to see if they can move freely a little ways. I also try to see if I can manually move the gearing by turning the load belt pully attached to the gearing with a finger while at the same time tugging on the tray or other load assembly. It's not easy because the pulley is hard to get to and you need long fingers.

If you cannot see anything by visual inspection, and can't free up things this way, then you have to keep trying to force the tray open little by little, maybe back and forth, all the while looking under and around for an obstruction or a broken gear or a plastic part loose or fallen out of place.

So I started taking the unit apart to check for something jamming the tray, but the front panel of the player seems to be attached to the tray.

No, it's not attached in that way. The front of the tray, the hatch or door, itself is a separate plastic piece that is larger than the opening of the tray slot. So you can't remove the front button panel and display without first removing the whole tray or at the very least, that front door or hatch of the tray. Without a player in front of me to view, I cannot say with certainty if that door hatch piece is easily removed with easly accessible screws or not.

So after removing some more pieces I was able to get a better grip on the tray and I was able to pull out about 1/2 an inch (though it never stays out, it retracts right back). I can't seem to find anything jamming it, though it is very hard to see without removing the tray. The player seems to be in its disc reading position, i.e. the clamp is raised above the tray as if it were going to spin a disc. Here's a picture, though it's pretty low quality.

Okay, then it seems you're working against the load motor when you try to pull it out. In other words, the player does not read the closed setting properly and behaves as though the tray still needs closing, so that when you press open, it is not registering since it thinks the tray still needs to close completely first. Somehow the proper synchronizing of the gears, the tray and the assembly is out of whack, for lack of the proper technical term.

If the player is unplugged, you should be able to extract the tray but likely have to manually turn the pulley so the laser and assembly will be moved to the proper position for tray removal, and it does have two screw-type blocks on the tray that need removal to allow it full release from the unit. It should not be attempting to close against you trying to open it if the player has no power to it. Sometimes, with a player that acts this way, I have been able to reset everything by taking out the tray, then allowing the load motor to run open/close several times without the tray, then open one last time, pull the power cord, slip the tray back in to where it is just barely in enough to replace the screw blocks, then power on and allow it to close.

Sometimes this works right off, and sometimes it has to be repeated to get everything into proper position. But just imagine it kind of this way:

Your garage door opener shuts off when the garage door chain pulls a certain switch with a latch and cable connected to one link at a certain spot on the chain in sync with the door being closed. Once closed, the unit resets the switch to a position to stop the motor and allow opening as the next function. But then the chain slips on the gear teeth a couple of places, so even when the door is closed, the switch doesn't get pulled to reset to allow opening because there's still a couple of inches of slack in the latch cable. And the door will still attempt to close even if you pull on it by hand to open because it hasn't yet been reset, all this just because something is off position to everything else and a switch didn't get reset. It's kind of a similar situation, but more complex of course.

What happens sometimes in shipping, especially if the unit was not power off completely before shipment is that the gears are out of alignment and the mechanical assembly is actually in raise mode when the tray eject starts. Sometimes it is bad enough you carefully have to rip out the tray so as to not break any important parts. Once the tray is out replace what broke and then put the tray back in when the player is in open mode. As said usually attributed to shipping the player by just unplugging without powering off or pulling the plug before the words OFF or no longer displayed and the LED above the power button turns red.

Forgot to add if the mechanical assembly is up then you need to remove the 4 screws and the metal bar at the back of the tray as it will hi tthe pickup and wipe out the laser if not removed.

So I've almost completely taken apart the player, but even with just about every screw gone (except for the one's on the boards at the base of the player, and the one's for the laser assembly), the tray seems stuck to the front. I can lift the tray from the back with ease, but I can't lift it from the front at all. The front panel is completely loose except for where it touches the front of the tray (the part with the words "LaserDisc" on it).

Should I just try to rip it out at this point and sacrifice one of my other two players to fix it? (the Marantz LV-510 and Mitsubishi M-V8000)

Quite apart from the question of whether the parts from those players will fit (probably not), have you tried rotating the gears which drive the tray mechanism? It sounds to me as though that's where your problem actually is.

Where would I find those? Would they be the two small white gears on the underside of the tray?

Agreed, it does seem that your trouble is in the gearing in the front under the tray. It's normal that you would not be able to lift the tray at all at the front end. That's where the tray fits into the door slot and gearing slides, and it is in there pretty tightly so it can't be jostled up and down. And the tray door is what's holding the front panel in position too.

Look under the tray at the front right as you're facing the player. There ought to be a load motor (small pulley) and a belt attached from it to a larger pulley. The larger pulley is the one that controls all the other gears you see underneath. Try to rotate that pulley to see if you can move the gears that way. It may take many turns before anything really starts to move. If it seems stuck and not movable one direction, try the other direction. Watch gears and assembly while doing this to see if you notice even a small movement. It won't be easy because the pulley is hard to get to with the tray in place, but it can be done. Hopefully the little belt can give you some friction to turn the pulley.

Also, there are two "riding gears" under the tray, each side, at the front that are on a rod. These are only for the tray to rest upon while opening and closing. If the tray is set on these unevenly, that will cause it to be stuck in place as well because the tray will be at an angle rather than straight. This is more important when returning the tray back into the player.

If you find a way other than ripping the tray out let me know. I usually get these out and it only damages the the drawer tabs that control the CD verses LD drawer opening. Once you have it out reassemble the player with the drawer out. Power it on and then press open. Once it completes the out cycle you can put the tray back in and it will work fine.

If you end up needing parts let me know as I can probably help with that.

All right, so if this doesn't work, I think I'll try krbahr's idea next. (which I think is forcing the tray out and just replacing whatever parts break)

So I've disassembled the player enough so that I can kind of see underneath the right side of the tray (facing the front of the player) and I tried to take a picture of it.


It's hard to see, but in the red oval there was a large white wheel connected to a smaller white wheel by a very thin dark grey belt-like thing. I don't know if these are the gear's I'm looking for, but I tried rotating them and nothing seemed to happen (well, except for the wheel spinning)

The tray load motor is the white-looking circular item with the small pulley on top and the belt connected to it. That belt connects to the large pulley. The large pulley is the one you need to move. You may have to spin it dozens and dozens of times before you get any response to the gears moving, sorry to say. The other catch is that you have to spin it the correct direction. Wrong direction, the pulley will eventually stop and most likely nothing moved. Right direction will get you to where the gear assembly will move, but it may take many turns of the pulley to get there.

But to me it is worth it to get the drawer out without breakage. If you don't mind waiting until tomorrow, I will get out a 700 series player and see which direction the pulley turns to do what, meaning clockwise vs counter-clockwise as looking down at the player. I just don't recall off-hand.

Okay, I took out a working CLD=D703 player and here's the results:

As looking from above, turning the big pulley clockwise lowers the laser assembly and then pushes out the disc tray to open position, in that order.

Turning that same pully counter-clockwise pulls the disc tray back in, to closed position, then lifts the laser assembly up for playback.

I had good response turning the pulley by pushing it with the eraser end of a pencil, if fingers are not possible to use. But the big pulley is so close to the edge of the tray, it seems accessible using your fingers.

I think you ought to try turning the big pulley clockwise, and eventually it may lower the laser assembly and open the tray, as long as there are no obstructions blocking this action, and with player unplugged. If you get to a point where it just stops and won't move, that means there's an obstruction or gear out of whack or sync like from shipping. But it won't hurt to try it. I have been able to sometimes get the tray to free up enough to pull it out by doing this and tugging on the tray if the pulley seems stuck, and then work it out bit by bit. You might have to turn the pulley dozens of times before you get any motion at all, because you can probably only turn it about 1/3 rotation each push.

Let us know the results.

When these players are not turned off properly the gears get out of sync from the bouncing during shipment. You need to get the tray out as right now the tray is not in the proper position for where the gears are at.