Hey All,

Have a CLD-D704. Over the summer, I was having load issues and after checking here and several other places, it was determined I needed a new load belt and grip ring. I bought and successfuly replaced them (verified they were the correct ones before purchasing) and my player was functioning perfectly. I use it at least once a week, and when I went to use it tonight, it would not properly load.

When I put in a disc, the tray retracts, and instead of hearing the normal operation (which I believe is the lower assembly seating the disc and raising it to the standby position, it sounds like it is stopping short of that and then the player ejects the disc. I tried it with several discs to make sure it was not just a faulty disc, and the behavior repeats consistently - the drawer retracts, it sounds like the player in unable to seat the disc (almost as if the process is being interrupted or blocked, and then the disc is ejected.

Any thoughts or help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Scott

Maybe it needs a new load belt.

loading belt!

In the original post, you mentioned replacing the belt. This being the case, my initial thought is the replacement belt is too big. Some claim the best is 4.0" and that can work for a while, but the correct size is 3.7". If you open the player and while it's loading the disc if you give the mechanism a little lift and it loads successfully, this will confirm it's a belt issue.

The correct measurement of a belt is to pinch it in half and measure the ½ length on a ruler, then double the value. If the measured length is more than 1 13/16, it's too big.

@blam1 - Do you have a belt you recommend? The one I purchased was a 3.8" I believe - it is this one here: SCQ3.8 Ring

I buy my SCQ3.8 belts here
https://marvac.com/products/prb-scq-3-8 ... ive-scq3-8
A lot cheaper than eBay and never had a problem with these.

Hopefully you clean the small pulley on the motor when you replaced the belt.

+1 for Marvac. Cheap and fast.

Thanks for the Marvac referral - they're about 40-50 miles from me, so it should only take a day or two to arrive.

To be honest, I didn't think to clean the pulleys when I changed the belt, I'll make sure to do it this time.

I have an update and hopefully you all have some insight. I took apart the player to replace the belt, and as I suspected the belt was perfectly fine - it is only 3 months or so old.

What I found was that as the disc retracted in, and tried to raise up, the upper clamp was giving resistance, and not allowing to disc to be completely raised up. This is what was making the straining sound, and forcing the disc to be ejected. I cleaned up the upper clamp on the surface, and this helped slightly. I got the player working, but it's a matter of time before it stops again.

Do I need to replace the upper clamp, or does it just need a cleaning? If a cleaning, does anyone have experience with this? Is it an easy task?

Thanks everyone!!

It sounds like an impeded mechanical assembly that controls the raising and lowering of the mechanism. It could be dried up grease. See if you can spot that area and observe anything unusual.

Also, did you clean up the gearing for where the loading belt is connected to to ensure there is nothing like dirt or grease on it. This could still affect the loading belt as the raising of the spindle / laser assembly is the heaviest part of the operation.

Make sure the two crossbars the clamper assembly is connected to are not bent downwards.