03 es 300 radio problem

The advice about home-made CDs is good advice. It's worse if you use sticker labels on your home-made CDs. When my 02 es300 non-lev CD changer imploded, I had it repaired by FCSR (Factory Car Stereo Repair), in Florida, for around $300 early in 2007. You can find them with a google search on the full name. They have removal instructions on their website. My Lexus dealer wanted something like $700 for their refurb replacement unit. I chose to save the cash and send it off for repair myself. It works great, and I would use them again in the future, although hopefully I won't have to. If you are handy with tools and don't mind driving your car with a hole in the dash for a few weeks, then give it a try. If, on the other hand, you can get it covered by the extended warranty, then by all means, have the dealer take care of it. Either way, it should get your problem fixed. But watch those home-made CDs. If you use the recordable CDs in the car, just insert one disc into the changer, keep 5 slots empty. This should keep the jamming limited to the music and not to the changer mechanism.

"ryan" wrote in message news:q3Kti.2740$7m5.2171@trndny02...

I had the same problem with my '01 IS. I bought the car new in '00 and owned it for nearly four years, and went through four CD changers. Each time it jammed (also ERROR3) they would replace it, and some time later I would receive the stuck CDs in the mail with a note to only use store bought CDs, even though they always were, and I never used anything else.

The bottom line is, it's a known issue, even if they won't acknowledge it, and it should be covered.

Thanks I will call tommorow.. R

I also have an 03 ES and never use purchased Cds only the ones I burn myself. While I have never had a problem with ejection I did for a time get error messages and they would refuse to play. This was solved by lower the burn speed from 52x to 32x . They take a little longer to make but for me they work flawlessly.

I should also add that I never put more than one CD into the player at a time. I hope this helps.

CD palyer blew out on one of the ES3NNs my wife has had. New one was required, and it was a real bargin, only around $1,000 as I recall. Seems likely it is a problem with them as it had never had home made CDs in it. They should all be the same anyway. Just check the extended warranty and see what it will do for you. Good luck!

I just purchased a 2007 ES350, and am worried about the wisdom. We always back-up our CD's that go into our car. It's the only safe thing to do to protect your costly originals. After reading the owners manual, the "News", and talking to friends , it seems that almost everyone has had trouble with the Lexus CD player.

The owner's manual specifies a bunch of criteria for the CD's (I didn't know that there were that many variables). Does anyone have brand names of "blanks" to avoid? Or better yet, do you have brand names that work without problems?

Graybeard

the best way to back up your CDs is to an MP3 player, and keep that in the car.

For my 2003 Lexus ES300, I copy original CD via "Exact Audio Copy" free software set at 4x copy speed to my hard drive, then copy it to a blank Maxell or Memorex CD set at a 4x copy speed. My 6 disk changer is loaded with 6 homemade copies and have not yet experienced any difficulties in the past 12 months. I think the EAC software and slow copy speed contribute in creating a quality playback copy for the car.