Feel free to move this to the hardware forum... not sure.

In my car, I have a built in slot loading cd player. It used to work fine playing all my burnt cds. Lately, there is tons of static and hissing whenever I put in a burnt cd, and more recently with my retail cds, I'm hearing the same hissing and scratching toward the latter tracks. All my cd's are clean with no scratches.

I suspect a dirty lens, but i'm not sure how I can go about cleaning it. Will a traditional lens cleaner work?

I use the same lens cleaner on my computer slot-loaders as I do on the tray ones.

I haven't needed one for the car yet but that's what I'd use.

good stuff. how do they work? I've never had to clean an optical drive of any type before. Do they have liquid solution that will come in contact with the lens?

No, don't put anything liquid on it. The cleaning CD's look like a regular CD but have a little brush that looks like an eyelash on it. You play the track it tells you to and the brush cleans the laser as it spins around.

The Discwasher CD cleaner I have has two little brushes on a CD. You put a drop of their liquid on one of the brushes and let it play for a while.