New formula brakes with sticky pistons

I bought some Formula Mega brakes direct from Formula month or so back. Just fitted them to the bike and can’t for the life of me get them to stop rubbing the rotors. Seems that there may be a sticky piston at both ends. Secondly, the clearance between the pads and the rotor is tiny.

Anyone else had sticky pistons on brand new brakes?

I’ve emailed Formula, but in typical Italian style they’re off from Dec 22 til Jan 13th. Lucky sods 🙂

Formula have a very small clearance between pad and rotor- fact.

I could never get both pistons to come out and retract equally despite them being serviced/ looked at under warranty. I was told it’s just one of those things and I need to take more time setting them up.

Silverfish also said that it takes 4 or 5 rides for the pads to settle in the right place which is incredibly frustrating when even small differences in skewer tension mean the pads will never really settle in one position and you will always have rubbing.

It got to the stage where I was realigning the calipers before every ride to reduce the rubbing as much as possible. I had the lbs look at them at great cost after the warranty route didn’t change anything and still no luck.

I have seen others mention this problem too and it is thought that the comparatively small piston size makes it hard for them to settle in the caliper properly square. When combined with the small pad clearance it is a potential nightmare. Other Formula users did say that they found The Ones to be less prone to this issue than R1’s for example.

I hope you have more luck than me! 🙂

I’ve just fitted some RX’s and noticed a similar thing when setting mine up.
You can try the following to get the pistons moving-
with the wheel and pads out hold a 4mm allen key between the pistons in the disc slot.
Squeeze the levers a few times to get the pistons to come out – you’ll probably find that one comes out before the other one. When both pistons are touching the allen key ease them back in with a wide screwdriver or tyre lever.
This will free up the tight piston seal, and help lubricate it with fluid.
Refit the wheel with the pads still out and line up the caliper so that the disc is dead centre in the slot, then refit the pads.
Pump the lever a come of times to push the pads out and hopefully they shouldn’t be far out.
There’s nothing you can do to increase the clearance between the pads and disc, so the first time you go near mud or water they’ll drag slightly.
The pads on mine front brake lasted 2 wet rides, had to replace them with EBC sintered.

The process MarkLG describes didn’t fix the problem in my case. Give it a go and see if it improves things

Not being funny but every new brake I’ve used has been sticky at first but has broken in after a few rides. Formula, Avid, Shimano, Tektro… And Tokico and Brembo while we’re at it 😉

I would expect my Formula to get over the initial temper tantrums after a year though!

Yep, that they should.