This fellow had a hard life. Apparently forgotten somewhere, sitting on some attic or barn for many years.
But these are tough machines.
Even in such condition it was still showing signs of life.

Olivers are infamous for their paint job and nickel-plating. Given conditions less perfect than warm house the paint will deteriorate and plating lifts from steel parts, flaking.

I would say it is part of their charm. Seeing Oliver in Perfect condition - like the one I saw in Grim’s collection - is rare and unexpected. I even dare to say: a bit uncomfortable!

Type slugs are in good shape so there is hope!

Carriage pinion wheel was busted - many teeth were broken. That’s what happens when someone forces the carriage onto the machine - or the machine is shipped with the carriage on rails.
In my case the machine arrived with the carriage stuck (hammered?) on rails, not moving at all.

Draw string certainly not original. Draw string clip was, of course, missing.

The usual appearance of chromed details exposed to harsh conditions.

Luckily the mechanism is complete, if only dirty. No serious rust or pitting which would require swapping any parts.

After freeing the carriage out of its rails I disassembled the top mechanism for cleaning. That was easy, done it before with my first Oliver 5.

While at it - I open the main spring housing, to check the spring. Of course it is broken.

After repairing the spring I assemble back the housing and notice that the top washer is missing.

This washer is crucial to integrity of the shaft: the spring-end is locked into this shaft and top screw, holding all in pace, is threaded into the shaft. Without the washer the shaft will open itself at the top, like a flower.

I made a new washer.

Draw string clip was missing.
Thanks to that clip one can quickly remove the carriage from the machine - feature otherwise seen only on Blickenderfer and older Adler machines.

I make a new clip from brass.

The machine is cleaned and dried. I start assembly.

Keys are dirty but complete.

They get a bath in surface-active liquid. Just 20 minutes there and all grime just slides off without damaging keys’ material.

I use the waiting time for de-rusting screws and levers. Brass wire-brush does the job efficiently.

Clean keys ready for assembly.

Escapement star wheel removal

The rack-pinion gear was busted on this machine - many teeth were broken. I have another derelict machine which agreed to donate the part.

To change it one needs to remove ribbon vibrator mechanism - and a few more parts since the gear and escapement star wheel are assembled as one part.

The procedure is quite simple:

Remove backspace actuator arm (yellow arrow)
Unscrew ribbon vibrator actuator arm (red arrow, standard right-hand thread, loosen locking nuts first)
Remove the fat spring (if present) and undo both screws marked with green arrows

Now turn the machine upside-down and find two screws holding backspace guiding plate. They are deep inside but accessible with long screwdriver.

Remove the one on the left and just loosen the other one, keeping it in place.

Now back “on surface” wiggle the subassembly out.

There it is.

With that out of way we can remove the star wheel / rack pinion gear assembly.

These machines come from pre-standarisation era so expect to do some adjustements when swapping parts between them. In this case the rectangular bushing was too wide. I filed it down a bit.

Machine prepared for a new heart!

After fitting the subassembly just follow above steps in the reversed order.

Screwing back the barrel screw for ribbon vibrator actuator arm can be a bit tricky. To make it easier it is good to remove tension from the bottom spring, on the inside of the machine.

With tension released the barrel screw is easy to screw back and adjust.

It is important to secure the barrel with locking nuts from above and below. If this part becomes too slack the carriage will stop moving.

Backspace mechanism adjustment

While in this area one can adjust backspace mechanism.

My machine had a problem with backspace not advancing enough to “click” the escapement pawl into position.

Bryan from Vintage Type made an excellent video about points which should be checked/adjusted to fix this problem.
I’ve checked all these adjustments on my Oliver but the problem persisted. To solve it one can “form” (“bend” in layman’s terms) the backspace guiding plate, marked with red arrow below. In my case a bend needed was around 1mm, in the direction of an arrow.

But before doing that it is good to first remove any play on both screws which hold this plate on the bottom of the machine (these marked with yellow oval on one of pictures above).

Just loosen them so the plate can wiggle and then press backspace arm to max position and tighten these screws.

That should solve the problem.

Ribbon spools

Ribbon spools were missing so I manufactured new, from aluminum. Original spools were made from wood but I felt adventurous and went for metal.

The internal cavity (collar) is 17mm diameter. Central axis hole is 5,3mm.

Fresh cotton ribbon installed on new spools.

As is often the case - ribbon spool covers were missing, too.
Before I find original covers I can use copies, 3D printed. They will make the job of holding the spools closed done.

Excellent resource, available to everyone, is 3D Typewriter Parts. I downloaded Oliver 9 spools as Oliver 5 are not yet present.

I arranged supports so that their traces will be on the inside face, not visible from outside. Just to save me work with sanding.

There was a snowy and sunny winter day - lot’s of free UV in the air. I took them outside for curing.

Mounted on the machine. I could sand them and paint green, as originals, but I feel no need to pretend these are genuine. They do the job and match quite well.

Turning into carriage. Lot’s of work here.

First step, after removing paper fingers, is to remove the platen. Right platen knob got some soaking in penetrating oil to loosen plunger screws holding it in place.

Once the right platen knob is removed - and all plunger screws holding the platen - the axis rod can be removed together with the left platen knob assembly.

To lift the platen one can simply spring away paper rollers’ assembly.

Platen was hard but not cracked, wearing signs of someone typing without the paper. It looked like oxidized, worn rubber.

But it is not rubber!

After sanding on the lathe a nice cork surface emerged!
So this machine was build or refurbished during war time, when Great Britain had rubber shortage and cork was used instead, where possible.

After cleaning the carriage assembly and installing the platen I checked if paper is fed properly. Feed rollers are fine so all should work well now.

It didn’t - the paper was going in crooked, whatever I did.

After closer inspection I found a source of problem: main roller holding bricks (yellow arrow below). They are housing axle of the paper roller and are screwed to the carriage very close to leaf springs (red arrow) which tension front paper rollers.

Well, these bricks are not symmetric.

Someone servicing this machine before me mounted one of them in opposite direction, in result having it laying partially on leaf spring edge.
This, in turn, resulted in a gap between paper roller and the platen, thus crooking the paper.

Once that was fixed the paper rolled in with authority, straight!

All ready for the first typing test.
As expected, capital letters CAPS and FIGs needed to be adjusted. It is done with double set of nuts on the back of the machine (yellow arrows).
While being there I adjusted spring tension (blue oval below) and amount of breaking power for TAB mechanism.

Friction-break to slow down the carriage while using Tabulator.

One more problem appeared while typing: just after line advance the row starts too high and slides down after a few characters. It looks like this:

What happens is that line advance ratchet does not rotate far enough to fully engage with the spring-loaded roller. It looks like this:

After typing a few letters vibrations in the mechanism cause it to finally glide into place while rotating the platen a fraction of an angle. Rest position looks like this:

So the synchronization between line advance mechanism and the ratchet was crooked.

Oliver has only one adjustment in this area but it is responsible for timing line advance with escapement pawl “click”, so that the carriage, upon return, stays in exact position, not in “half-character” mode. This adjustment is a screw with its locking nut as shown below.

My problem was related to the distance between this screw and a face marked with arrow below. Upon meeting at line advance the actuator arm is engaging the gear which in turn advances the platen. And it was advancing a tiny-tiny too little, certainly due to wear of parts.

I sanded the face of extrusion, marked with red arrow below, just a fraction of mm. Polished and cleaned, the actuator rod lightly oiled and gear axle (with its spring) got a drop of oil, too.

That did a trick - the travel of actuator arm upon hitting the extrusion is long enough to fully rotate the platen into next “click” on the ratchet.

So there it is, finally typing!

I especially like numerals, look at this 8 and longer tails of 3, 5, 7 and 9!

So, as a prize for all this work I took my new-old Oliver 5 for a proper photo-session.

Clean and dry mechanics, with a few drops of machine oil only in places which require it.

The carriage is easily removed just by pressing TAB and RIGHT buttons close to ribbon vibrator.

Retaining clamp sits in its parking position, waiting for the carriage to grab it upon re-installation.

Carriage rollers cleaned, moving freely. They require oiling with machine/gun oil, sometimes - thus oiling holes in them.
The oil should lubricate their axles, not surface which shall be dry.

Brass patent plate cleaned but not polished - to preserve the patina.

British-layout keyboard.

It was a very satisfying restoration.

A handsome machine, to be used for many years ahead.