Yeah, I do that too but the Mafacs are so flimsy you'd lose 30% of your pad. Also, once I've got the tool, there's no stopping me.

Now that is strange. I always thought that the washers, sort of roundish, were adjusted to achieve toe-in. Will have a look next time that I am at the cottage. Anyway, a picture - the washers, marked 456e have a slight bevel allowing the pads to be tilted this way and that, making toe-in relatively easy...

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.

When the topic went from bars to brakes and folks started talking about bending the calipers for toe-in I thought WTF???...just spin the washer! Seems likes folks are employing the famous "don't force it, use a big hammer" technique when really only a little finessing is actually required.

I too love early Mafacs, in particular the Dural Forge-marked Racers (pre-plastic bushing models without the "RACER" embossing) as well as Mafac's large cantilevers for tandems. We used those big cantilevers on early Mtn Bikes and I still use a set on my Ritchey Palo Alto Tandem.