Tonight I spent about three hours disassembling and cleaning the carriage portion of my 1971 Olympia SG-3. I really love the fact that flipping two levers inside the shell allows the entire carriage to lift up and off for easier servicing. 

The grinding/sticking I was originally getting mid-carriage was due to a piece of the right carriage cover being bent back and over itself. Removing it and forming it back remedied the situation fairly quickly. I cleaned and treated the rear body panels which show signs of rust developing underneath the paint. (Rust on other portions of the machine indicate it was kept in a less-than-ideal location for years.)

Just as I was nearing completion, the draw band managed to slip off its mount and the mainspring’s unwinding broke the draw band at the metal attachment to the carriage. It took a while to remove the old material, form the cleat open, reseat the draw band and then close it back up. Fortunately re-tensioning the mainspring was pretty simple and straightforward.

The platen action is now so smooth that with the variable lever in the open position, the entire platen will spin freely in a way I’ve never seen a typewriter manage before. Sadly it shows that the right platen knob has a small eccentricity, though it’s so minor I think I’ll leave it alone for now.

In cleaning it, I also noticed that the carriage return arm apparently used to be chromed, but it was done so badly it’s all been peeled off at this point. As a result, the return arm has a galvanized appearance which isn’t ideal. I’ll have to consider some options to improve it in the future.

The toughest part of the operation was the insane amount of degreaser (acetone tonight) it took to clean off the margin rail to get the margin sets to work properly. I have a feeling that someone managed to get Scotch tape stuck up underneath the left margin set, and it took 20 minutes to flush it all out. Now they’re as smooth as butter. I really appreciate the easy-to-use form factor of these margin sets.