As you know to the floor ain't good. If you pull on the E brake then hit the brakes that'll quickly tell you if it's a rear brake clearance problem or not. If your brake shop has arcing equipment it made a difference on my braking with my used shoes & I'd do it with new ones too.

The E brake expands 1 shoe so it might take 1 pump to take up the wheel cyl space created but yes you'll be able to eliminate the rear shoe clearance & I dont think the clearance would/could be that excessive (low pedal reserve yes but not to the floor). Either; air/bad booster/excessive round nub clearance/bad M/C/excessive shoe/pad clearances. I forgot what's been done/checked. On a difficult case I cap the M/C & want a hard pedal with virtually no travel (idling) if the booster/MC is bled out & functioning normal then hookup 1 half & continue on. Holler how it goes David

Well I replaced the driver's side rear drum (fit just fine), then I adjusted the shoes on that drum (much easier to do so now- drag is very even). Before I did the adjustment I tried the e-brake experiment- I mashed the brake pedal a couple of times (went down to the floor every time- didn't go instantly down to the floor without resistance, but I had almost reached the floor by the time I felt any appreciable firmness) to center the shoes before adjusting them. Then I applied the ebrake as far as I could go and checked the cable- it was pretty taut. Tried the brake pedal again but got the same result- no difference. So now I'm suspecting the front brakes. I'll finish off replacing/adjusting the right rear drum then tackle the fronts to see if something's going on with them.

Will keep you posted-
David

Things just go from bad to worse....

I finally got around to attempt to readjust the front brakes- in order to have some room to do it I need to turn the Charger around in the garage (small garage). But when I tried to back the car out, I found that I had NO brakes at all. The e-brakes worked though (thank goodness). The irritating thing though is that before I worked on the back brakes, at least the brake pedal worked a LITTLE. I think I can still readjust the fronts as the car sits, it's just going to be more difficult to do so.

But I'm now beginning to wonder if the front brakes are the culprit as I had first though. One thing I should mention is that some years ago when I first tore down the car (and long story short) I found that the car apparently had factory disk brakes but apparently one of the previous owners had swapped out the front disks (presumably along with the spindles) for 10" drums. I know this because A) the master cylinder/booster set - along with the lines - are specific to disk, and B) I found the proportioning valve (and it looks original), which I understand is used only on disk setups.

I'm wondering if there's a problem with the mismatched disk setup with the drums that's contributing to this poor/no brake issue? Any ideas?

David

Noone wants to take a shot at this? I'll listen to theories, ideas to try, etc....?

There needs to be a residual pressure valve to keep the brake shoes out close to the drums. A disk brake master cylinder won't have these in the front.

R.