Ford CVPI CD Error

I own a 2011 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, that the radio wasn’t working in.

So, I pulled the radio out to see what was going on, and as I suspected, the wiring going to the radio had been cut and spliced (for the purpose of setting up their radio equipment, etc) by the police department I purchased it from…

Tonight, a coworker & I spliced all the wires back together as they should be, and the radio worked (as it should).

When I loaded a CD in the player, it loaded properly, but I received a message on the screen that said “CD Error”. Thinking there was a problem with with that individual CD, I tried a couple more (known good ones) and the result was the same.

Any ideas on why this is happening?

Is there some way I can clean the CD player out so that it reads the CD’s I put in it?

Or, is it something else?

Thank you.

Mark B Handler

I have to clean the lens on the laser on my desktop CD player every once in a while, otherwise it won’t play my CD’s without skipping. Worth giving that a try. I just gently wipe the lens with a soft, dry, lint free cotton cloth. On my unit this is easy to do, just pop the lid, remove the CD and there’s the lens. On car CD players it may not be so easy; i.e. may require taking the unit out of the dash and removing the player’s covers. There are many reasons why the CD Error message could appear, but it seems like if the radio works, then it pretty much has to be a problem with the CD mechanism of some sort. If the CD player hasn’t been used for a long time (several years) then the mechanism that moves the laser from the inside to the outside of the CD may be stuck to its tracks.

I’m going to try something that is meant to be inserted into the CD player on my car and see if that helps.

As I mention, this is a retired police car and what you say (about the laser mechanism) may be worth my effort to try and fix.

I would think that this being a police car, that the CD player (and what you said about it) was used very little (if at all) by the police department that used my car.

Thank you.

Mark B Handler

Yes, and they sell those kits to clean the lens w/o removing the stereo. (Not perfect, but they are $7.)

If worse comes to worse, a new radio is cheap… though you’ll probably have to move from CDs to USB sticks. (My stick has 1500 songs… room for more.)

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Almost no stock stereo is worth fixing. There are exceptions like if the lens cleaning does it. Replacement is the more economically friendly.