Originally Posted by
Charles Wahl
I'm pretty sure I've seen MAFACs both ways, with washers that provide some toe-in, and with washers that don't -- and they weren't the after-market ones from Compass/RenéHerse either. I'll have to take a look at my brake stash. My feeling about this is that I was looking at earlier (no toe-in) vs later production, but maybe that's just my imagination or creative history.
It seems to me that MAFAC might have used a simple beveled washer (thinner on one side than the other), so that one could rotate the washer during setup to get more or less toe-in, or none, so long as there was reasonable friction between the arm and the washer to prevent its rotation in use -- but they were pretty smart people, so maybe they tried that and it didn't work.
Now I feel better. I know darn well that I can toe-in the Mafac brakes that I have owned using those beveled washers. This, for what it is worth, is one of the reasons that I am a fan of Mafac stoppers. Simply put, though a bit difficult to install and set up, they just plain work well, when compared to other offerings of the day.