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10 years in the bike trade as a mechanic and every day is still a school day
prior to this i fannied about with a fat flat head screw driver or a tire lever if there was room.
during a recent tool splurge (due to me getting a propper workshop and the like) i spotted the park PP-1
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it looks like a solution to a problem that never exists but i took a punt anyway as im fed up of opening avid brakes (you have to take out the pads and put in an old set before using anything hard or the pad can(not always but enough times for me) break up. this tool made it a dream to open them up with the original pads and zero damage ! - im for ever having to open the brakes on jaynes bike as she always knocks them when putting bike in car.
doesnt damage pads , has a nice profile to slide into fully closed pads and has the correct offset to let you do the front ones that you usually have a fork leg in the way of where the screw driver wants to be.
park ones 25 quid - its not worth that - a fat spanner one can be had for 7 quid.
anyone any other revelations to add ?
would it be better if it had two thin flat 'spades' and worked like a reverse set of pliers so that as you put pressure on it forced the two spade ends apart and the pads were pushed in together and in parellel?
a quick google shows it already exists for car calipers so I guess a scaled down version of this?
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might be hard to make that thin enough but strong enough to get into a fully closed set of pads ?
tbh this does the job much better than id have imagined.
The superstar copy of the original costs £10, looks to be about the same.
The Hope suggested method is to push on the back of the opposite pad, still not ideal but it does work.
oh yeah im not suggesting you buy the park one - im just saying that the concept really is much better than a screw driver !
I like the sound of that - will get me a SS rip-off one.