I have a 1965 Satellite with non power drum brakes. I took the car out for a cruise today since the weather was nice. About a mile from my house I started to smell something burning and when I pulled in the driveway the passenger side rear wheel was smoking pretty good. I let everything cool down and removed the wheel and the drum and lo and behold the brake shoe lining was a crumbled mess. There were 3 big pieces and lots of fragments. Obviously the brakes hung up somehow. The inside of the drum is still nice and smooth. I did apply the emergency brake for the first time in a long time today before I took the car for a ride while it was sitting in my driveway (and yes I released it before I drove away). I drove the car about 25-30 miles though before I even started smelling anything. So..what should I be looking for here? Emergency brake hung up on me? Never fooled with an e brake issue before so not sure what to look for. Or do i have some other issue that would cause the brake lining to disintegrate? Should I pull the other side as well and check it's condition as well? I have had the car about 2 weeks and drove it about 300 miles before I encountered this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Hoping i can fix this on my own with some help.

Sounds like the lining was old?, overheated? either way there junk. Yes you got to replace the other side too, alway replace linings in pairs.

Time to inspect the front now also.

Will check all four drums/linings now. Am curious as to what would cause that and also don't want it to happen again right after I replace the linings either and smoke those too.

Probably a rusty/sticky parking brake cable that didn't release.

I'll suggest step by step trouble shooting and checking. The original problem could be simply the shoes themselves falling apart, mechanical binding or a problem with a stuck slave cylinder. One side only kinda rules out the master.

When you replace the shoes, do the slaves also. Clean and lube the self adjusters and (carefully) lube the contact points inside the drum. When done, and while still on stands, check it out. Adjust the brakes for slight drag first, bleed then check. Apply the service brakes firmly then release. Check for any binding. Apply the parking brake, release and check. Penetrating oil (PB blaster, liquid wrench ect.) is "first aid" for sticking parking brake cables. If they are really rough, Inline tube and others sell good re-pops.

pretty sure a sticking parking brake would only burn up 1 shoe. if both were eaten then it is something else.

if you didn't notice any draging I would go with the simplest solution first just bad shoes.

were the organic or semi metalic?

organic could sometimes go bad and fall apart. seen some in the 80's that just fell to pieces. literally, large chunks fell out. so a lot of people went to redoing old shoes instead of buying the new ones.

Smoking drum brakes?
Bad for your health.

R.

I had a similar problem with a 62 Savoy and ended up soaking the E brake cable housings with WD40 and that freed up the cables and killed the drag and ebrake hangup.

Look to be organic. Bought new shoes for the rears. Going to get into it this weekend and see what the problem was. Thanks for all the advice. Only the passenger side was bad so I am assuming the e brake got hung up somehow. Will just check everything as advised since I will be into it anyways.

When it happened to me, it was because I had switched the primary and secondary shoes on that side.

Glad you mentioned that. Had forgotten all about that.