Anyone know anything about disc brakes?

Any chance of twatting the pads out? If not sacrifice them and jab that screw driver harder, just keep it away from the pistons.

Open the lever too, should make things easier to push.

Always

I did the pads on my elixir 3 polo bike brakes on Wednesday, I just pushed the piston back in with a screwdriver, have done this millions of times with car and motor bike calipers. It's tough to get them to move at first, but they will slowly go all the way back in.

It won't help you right now, but try to use a plastic tyre lever (or similar) to reset the pistons - a screwdriver can damage them.

I've have some trp spyres. Is it normal to get a juddering when braking? It happens on both the front and rear brake. I'm fairly sure it's when the pads move onto the smaller area of the disc. Is this normal or have i cocked something up when installing?

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Same thing happened to front Spyre SLC I installed recently: I used some sand paper to round slightly the edges of the pads and also of the rotor on the area you have pointed out. The juddering disappeared completely. Hope it helps.

Could be pads not bedding in properly, also try realigning calipers

I had massive judder on mine when using the stock pads, went away instantly (and stayed away) when swapping to Shimano resin pads.

didn't fiddle with my bb7's today, as they have been fine for about a month or two now

They all advise you to do this, it never fucking works, obviously no help when everything is pushed together but i like using Allen keys and being careful.

You know when they say dot 5.1 on brake pads means they are ruined and you need to chuck them... How serious is that? :-/

Depends if they got drowned in it or it's just a splash. If it's the later then there's all sorts of tricks for removing it - from burning it off on the hob to soaking them in dishwasher detergent.

Personally I'd just fit new pads though.

Pretty much what Howard says.

If you've got a gas hob or a blowtorch then give them a good toasting and see if they are any use, of course if you haven't gotten them clean and try them then the discs will get contaminated which again isn't the end of the world but new pads might just be the easier option.

Will contamination be obvious? The question is did they get a tiny splash or none at all...

Ride on em and see if the squeal

Ha! They were squealing before, but they are silent now! :)

Timeline of events:

Change pads - brake squeals - take out pads and maybe push a piston out by mistake (this is when contamination may have occurred) - jam it back (Defo scratched the pads with screwdrivers) - bleed the brakes... Everything seems to be working but I'm worried the bike will crumble underneath me... Especially as I'm doing a race in the lakes on Thursday :-/

Bonus providing they stop you

Or ride fast toward a wall and brakes at the last minutes.

Double bonus, I now have a bleed kit and no fear of bleeding brakes... Now what extra stuff would I need to work on shimano brakes? Some of thier mineral oil and I guess different spacers, anything else?
(Partially because now I'm not that worried about messing about with hydro's I'm going to put hydro's on the polo bike, but mostly because everyone I'm racing with on Thursday has shimano's :-/. )

Just the mineral oil really, unless you want to do it all exactly as told to by shimano.

Possibly the shimano bleed funnel too.

If you want to do it like they say, otherwise anything with the right fitting is fine, and depending on what kit you bought you might already have something. Although you've already bought a kit I can recommend the stuff from http://www.epicbleedsolutions.com/ for being cheap and as good as anything else.

I take it the threading on the shimano is not the same as the avid then... Have an avid kit... Actually just realised that I don't want to cross contaminate dot and mineral oil... Might just buy another avid and hope I don't need to bleed anyone else's bikes :)

If you rinse it all out it's cool. It might be the same, can't remember off the top of my head. Get the kit that does everyone's from the website I said.