my 1st post here. i actually never knew this site existed until the dealer told me today that it was going cost $750 to get the CDs out of the changer in my wife's 01 LS430. much to my surprise i discovered I was probably to 1000th person at least who had this exact same problem.
i told the dealer no thanks and told my wife she would just have to listen to the radio from now on.
however this evening my curiosity and some of the posts here (especially the "just bang on it" theory) got the best of me. I went out and started to try various methods:
1) banging on the side of the console. did nothing. the console on the LS is wide and extremely padded. i doubt my hitting even registered on the player itself
2) pocketknife and try to pry out the CD by an edge: didn't work, but was careful not to do irreparable damage either
3) hemostats: i have some of these for fishing. i hoped i would be able to actually grab the CD with them and pull out, but there wasn;'t enough room. however, as i was prying around in there (very gently) i did start to trigger the player to try to do something (the green lights came on and 'trap door' all the sudden tried to move)
nothing would eject, so i pushed the door back open and then could see that the cartridge had tried to move. i pushed on it some more and then let the door close and hit eject again and surprise, a CD came out. i hit eject again and another and so on.
all of them came out except for the CD that originally caused the problem. a homemade one. the changer display shows 0 discs in the player however i know that one is still there somewhere. i can reload CDs (i only loaded 4) and they play.
so it is not totally fixed, but having a 5 CD changer and keeping the $750 in my pocket seems an ok trade. i have a fear that the next time my wife hits a pothole with the CD playing it will lock up again, but i'll keep my fingers crossed till then.
