Bought a CLD-79 on ebay. Got it in the mail today and its DOA. Any disc I try just gives me a P5. CDs will just refuse to spin up. Will start for a few sec, then stop, in a loop. A few of the threads I saw on this issue say its a spindle problem. Mainly, the rubber on the spindle has warn down and the player thinks every disc is dirty. Checked the spindle and there's no rubber on either part.

Any suggestions on how to fix the issue?

Google Search pioneer part VEB1237

Great! thanks for the part number. Hopefully this'll work.

No problem, I hope you have good luck, usually they are back ordered, I just ordered one recently and got it pretty fast though

Most likely it got dropped on the side while in the box and the plastic spindle centering adjuster broke and now the centering is so far off it cannot read anything.

Good news: I think what happened is grease got everywhere and dirtied the spindle. Cleaned it up and it'll finally play discs!

Bad news: the picture is really noisy. Tried my Wham! 8" and it acts like its got bad laser rot. Played pretty well in my 703 (minus some sync issues with the Analogue audio). The digital audio on Terminator 1 was so bad it crackled. Plays perfectly on my 703. So need to look at the RF section and see if its dirty.