No sir,

Ignorant would have been to keep going the way you were never asking for any assistance and assuming you knew it all.

Have you gotten a chance to adjust and re bleed them yet?

The ONLY ignorant or dumb question is the one you don't ask

I know the way you are describing to bleed the brakes and it will work as you stated if you do one more step. The cup with your brake fluid must be held above the the bleeder screw itself. If I am understanding your procedure properly you are attatching a hose to the bulb of the bleeder, opening bleeder, pumping brake pedal to force air out and suck fluid back in. Then close bleeder. Like stated, your results will be better if cup with fluid is above, not below bleeder. I do prefer to use the traditional method of pumping three times, holding, cracking bleeder, closing, release pedal. Repeat till no air seen. Another vote here to put plugs in M/C and pump slowly till you should feel the pedal get very firm. And very good advice to not push the pedal all the way to the floor when bleeding as it can damage the seals in the M/C. If you need to isolate the wheel affected you can clamp off the rubber hose at the rear splitter and see if the pressure gets better, indicating air in rear. Same applies to each of the front hoses. And other good info regarding brake shoe adjustments.

Alright...so here is the deal....I bled the brakes the way it has been described in this thread and thinks went a little smoother.

The only problem is.......I have NO IDEA what the brake pedal should feel like on a 4 wheel manual drum brake car.

I am used to driving power disc brake setups and understand that there is a difference in feel, but I am not sure how it should feel.


Seems like it got softer after moving from the rear to the front....

Tips??

How many times go you go back around each wheel?

Sometimes it takes going from RR, LR, RF, , LF and then checking the adjustment on all 4 and doing it again.

Sometimes I will adjust the drums really tight to bleed and then back them off to the proper adjustment afterwards.

As for how it should feel, I haven't done a 4 wheel drum system in many years so I couldn't help without being there and or driving it.

Sorry.

Spent alot more time adjusting each wheel and making sure they were closely matched to each other. Went around and bled the wheels again and it is much better.

Took it out for the first time in 12 years and things went great

The only thing I noticed was that I have no dash lights

Now on to the next issue....at least this one wont keep me from driving it!!!!

Picked up my passes to the Turkey Rod Run on my test drive and things are looking great for my weekend!!!!!

Glad you got it worked out!

manual brakes should DEFINITELY have a firm brake pedal. but, how firm depends on what size master vs what size wheel cylinders. you can "soften" the brake pedal by going to a smaller master or larger wheel cylinders, and doing so will also increase your brake effort without increasing pedal feel/leg input.

go drive that car!