Just fitting a 2nd hand pair of K18 Oro brakes. Fitted front, and replaced the pads but there is literally no air gap between the disc and pads so I get rubbing and no amount of adjustment will stop the rubbing.

Got a little bit of rub off the back as well.

Any solutions?

Got Hope on my other bike and you can adjust the bite point, but sadly not on the K18’s.

Any advice? Bleeding?

The calipers will need pushing back. Put the old pads in and wiggle a large flat headed screwdriver in to push them back.. If they still wont go back then they may be sticking. Mine ended up like this after many years of zero maintenance. Ended up buying new piston kit from formula and replacing. Wouldn’t class it as an easy job, but it’s not rocket science. New pots in, new dot4, give them a bleed (took a couple of goes to get the technique) and they’re like new.

Combo of new pads + bad rubbing most probably means the pistons aren’t fully back. So yep first just try to push them back further. But if that doesn’t work, try bleeding- the reason being, if they were bled with thinner pads, there might just not be enough space in the reservoir to displace the fluid into, preventing the pistons retracting.

Oros being an old design don’t have massive clearance, but it should be adequate.

If it does turn out to be bad piston seals, give me a shout, I’ve got a spare caliper somewhere which I’m never going to use, I can’t promise it’s in perfect condition but then, it will be free 😉 They’re very durable brakes though.

This was common on mine as well even after getting the pistons to retreat as much as possible. Sand down the copper backing by rubbing them on a brick or a flagstone (you can sand down the pad material but you’re throwing money away there :))
You don’t need to remove much material.
Also, check that the rotor isn’t warped

Bin them and get some slx brakes. I use to have those brakes and they’re an absolute nightmare. Four of our biking group have all ditched their Formula’s for Shimano due to rubbing problems and general crapness.

I ended up opening the bleed screw and letting a little fluid out, perfect now. Needs a complete overhaul now, thiis was the symptom of the problem.

OTOH I ran 4 sets of these Oros for years and now 4 sets of The Ones or R1s and they all worked flawlessly 😉 Unlike my one set of Shimanos. Funny old world.