About a month ago, my power return for the carriage stopped working and I discovered that some metal levers on the left side of the carriage with connect the power return band to the platen ratchet mechanism came apart. As I was removing the end caps for a looksee, metal chrome and black lever pieces started to fall out.
Luckily, I nabbed a totally trashed donor-machine which by a miracle had a perfectly fine upper-carriage and its "pitch" even matched that of my cursive-script machine.
Today was the day I got to work, and after using Ted Munk's repair-bible for the electric Olympias and about 4-5 tries at getting the "seating" adjustments right...my new donor carriage is working perfectly.
I am so happy I was able to push myself to accomplish this repair.
I now will "harvest" usable parts from the donor machine to hoard away for my primary machine. Lots of plastic parts where used in these machines...so those will be saved for future repairs. Even got a working main spring. Motor was shot, unfortunately. My electric meter tells me the windings are shorted to ground.
All in all...it was a good day to place this Olympia SGE 35 back into its use-rotation on my office desk.