Changing the Feed Rollers on a Bijou (Erika) Model 5 Portable Typewriter

This 1927 Bijou (Erika) Model 5 has been my "go-to" machine for about 12 years now, ever since it was given to me by Ruth Harriet Landau. By "go-to" I mean it's the typewriter I most enjoy using. Not only does it still look gorgeous, and usually works beautifully, but it also has a story. Ruth and her family were "stateless" Polish refugees who brought the Bijou out to Australia with them when they escaped Europe just after the outbreak of World War II. Little did they know that their Bijou's predecessor, the folding Model 3, had during World War I been declared an "alien item" by the then Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes. But the Landaus themselves were classified as aliens when they docked at Fremantle on April 6, 1940, after a voyage from London on the migrant ship the SS Orgades. The Landaus obviously treasured the Bijou, as I do now. For close to 70 years they kept it in excellent condition - there's not a blemish, a trace of a scratch on it. No worn patches, no paint chips, no corrosion. The only mistake they made while carefully and lovingly storing it all those years was to keep the carriage release lever on, so the feed rollers remained pressed up against the platen - and a solid platen it is too. When I started to have difficulty feeding paper on to the platen, I discovered the feed rollers had been seriously flatted out by the platen.

Some years ago I was asked to attempt to bring back to life an Erika 6 portable. I took one look at it and realised the poor thing was way, way beyond resuscitation. It was deader than a Norwegian Blue parrot. It had been treated dreadfully over the years. By the time it reached me, nothing on it moved, not even the key levers or typebars, let alone the carriage. Still, I kept it, thinking one day I could take it apart and use it as a spare parts machine. That day arrived when I decided to replace the feed rollers on my Bijou.
Did I say "take it apart"? Has anyone ever tried to take apart an Erika 6? These over-engineered beauties were never designed nor assembled with the thought that some day some idiot might try to take one apart. Even just getting the casing off was an absolute nightmare. There are thick metal bars running across the workings and embedded in each side of the casing. Not screwed in, embedded! Solid! Crowbars, sledgehammers, pneumatic drills, nothing could shift them. I kid, of course, but that's what it felt like.
In the end I won. Covered in dirt and sweat, bloodied, but triumphant, I held up both sets of feed rollers (thank goodness the ones in the Model 6 matched the ones from the 5!):

So, now we get to the really tricky bit. Getting the platen out of the Model 5, so I can get at the flattened feed rollers. First the platen rod screw (circled left) is loosened and the rod pulled out from the right (there is no platen knob on the left).

When the platen comes out, the platen turning lever on the left (there is no arm) and the carriage release lever on the right simply pop off the machine. Be aware. It will happen. Eventually they'll have to go back in exactly as they were:

The metal plate that the platen sits on lifts up, allowing access to the feed rollers' cradle. The carriage release rod, which naturally runs through the feed rollers' cradle, needs to be pulled out from the position circled above:

Then it's a matter of unscrewing and removing the feed rollers' cradle and replacing it with the spare parts cradle:

For some reason (I forget why  now, maybe trouble with the screws) I went the long way around and replaced the line of feed rollers on the original cradle. This made things difficult, because of the two arms on each end holding the lines in place, and the springs allowing them to move back and forward when the carriage release lever is applied. But it's simply not possible to replace the lines of feed rollers without removing the cradle from the machine and unattaching the arms. Which of course means the whole thing has to be reassembled.

In case you're not already sufficiently confused, I'm holding the cradle the wrong way around here. The end under my thumb goes on the right.

Here that end slots into the teeth of the carriage release lever

All done! Now comes the really, really hard part - getting the platen back in while holding the carriage release lever and the platen turning mechanism in place. I usually put a platen back in from right to left, but in this case I found it easier to put it in left to right. Anyway, it all worked out well and I can now once again feed paper on to the platen and move it up properly.