PontiacBonnevilleClub.com

Hi Guys,

The CD player in my wife's Bonnie is acting up. It will play manufactured cds without fail... but it gets very touchy with burned cds. It will play a burned cd every 7-8 time its inserted. When the cd goes in, it says 0:00:00 cd time and hangs on track 1. Then we wait a few mins and try again... no luck. after about 20 mins of trying it finally works.

Any ideas?

Have you tried a different brand of burned disc?

Hi 00Beast,

Yes, we have tried other brands, no luck.

Sounds like an oddity with your unit. Have you tried cleaning the CD lens with the air from a can like you use for computer screens?

iPod? lol

The cd player in our F250 does the same thing with burned cd's.....and it's a Pioneer.
I don't think the grooves are as deep in a "homemade" cd. Just my opinion.
I've tried lens cleaners...blowing air in it to clean it out. Nothing helped.

Try burning the CD with different software, or different hardware.

I burned cd's using 2 different computers with totally different hardware and software. Didn't make any difference. Maybe newer hardware does a better job?

The laser optics in the CD mechanism could be weakening.

The Class 2 radio CD mechanisms are much "heartier" than the preceding 2001 Series mechanisms (the radios in the 1995-1999 Bonnevilles, for example).

A burned CD-R does not have the same reflective characteristics that a factory pressed CD has. When the laser optics are functioning normally, this is not an issue. Newer CD mechanisms are designed to be compatible with CD-Rs. As the laser optics weaken, the oversampling capabilities of the mechanism also diminish. (CD players "oversample," meaning they sample the data on the disc multiple times.) If some of the samplings fail due to vibration or in the case of a CD-R, a less than optimal reflection of the laser beam, the oversampling should correct that error.

When you play a factory pressed CD in the player, does it skip frequently when you go over bumps, by chance?