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So my xc bike came with sramm XX brakes (it's a few years old). But new pads just don't fit, like any new pads.
Pistons fully in pads in caliper and a tiny space between pads. Now obviously I could just sand away the "excess" to all it all to fit but that's probably about a third of a pad. I can't see what's wrong.
Same no matter cheap pads or proper SRAM ones. It's a right pain.
Any tips apart from buy new brakes which I'd rather avoid.
Do the pistons move back out at all after you have pushed them into the caliper? I had this and it seemed mine had a little too much fluid in the system. I undid the bleed screw in the brake lever a little bit and then pushed the pistons back into the caliper and had a bit of fluid seep from the bleed screw. With the pistons still pushed into the caliper I tightened the bleed screw back up. That solved the problem for me.
My 2013 Sram xo brakes decided to adjust themselves 'in' over the winter, a change of fluid and a bleed sorted them.
Definitely check if the pistons push all the way in to sit flush in the caliper. If not it may be over bled like is said above
If they haven't been bled in a while then it's worth doing a full bleed, flushing out all the old fluid with new.
DOT fluid absorbs moisture from the air, which will increase the amount of fluid in the system like it's been overfilled.