Many problems on the suggestions so far:

1) the drum needs to be on to rotate the shoes to move the lever. Actuating the brakes with no drum will not show you anything.

You can pry the front shoe forward to see the action of the lever moving the star wheel.

2) There is no spring that touches the star wheel on self adjusting brakes.

3) if the star wheel is in backwards the lever will not touch it, it won't move the wheel backwards.