Not a bad repair at all. Pop off the digitizer and the LCD, skip all of the other madness. As per usual, the iOpener approach was useless; used a heat gun to get the digitizer off and tossed the case (minus digitizer and LCD) onto a hot plate, then did the usual dental floss trick. Total time (excluding the 15 minutes of trying to get the iOpener to do anything) was about 30 minutes.

Only other issue is that it was mildly problematic to properly position the new battery with the batter isolator in place, since it’s difficult to make sure the screw hole is properly aligned.

I replaced the digitizer while I was there (mine was cracked), but that’s pretty much a freebee when doing the battery swap.

Pay particular attention to the routing of the wires from the DC input board to the logic board relative to the wiring for the microphone and the post that supports the right-hand side of the display data cable bracket; route them improperly and you won't be able to get the data cable bracket back into place. Unfortunately the photos don't capture this detail. I also found it easier to position the microphone before fully inserting the logic board, otherwise the leads wanted to torque it about 80 degrees to the plane of the case and no amount of prodding with a spudger could coax it into position.