sportrak poor rear brakes

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help has anyone any ideas,my brakes worked fine untill i did a spring over axle conversion .now i have poor rear brakes and loads of pedal travel,ive fitted new shoes removed the lips on the drums ,bleed them to death (i never see air)but they never get any better,there adjusted to the point of just binding ,is there a weight compensater i cant see any where? a bleeding order ive gone o/s/f to n/s/f to n/s/r any ideas?

Handbrake.

The rear brake shoes adjustment is on a cam within the brake drum. Adjustment of the shoes is automatic. If the drums have been taken off or shoes replaced then the brake peddle is often low and braking effected. You need to ratchet --- up.down.up.down the handbrake to move the cams to tighten any gap in the rear shoes. If the handbrake cable is slack the brakes wont firm up. You might need adjust the handbrake cable to take away any slack in the handbrake's cable length. Adjust the cable so there remains only 3 to 5 clicks on the handbrake lever. Then ratchet -- up/down/up/down the handbrake to tighten the rear shoes.
Bleeding ... wasting your time unless its done in the correct order...
must be from 'longest run' to 'shortest run'...ie rear must be first [longest distance from the master cylinder]. Then next longest and so on finishing with the shortest ....

handbrake

there all adjusted ok on the cams and hand brake is mint ,although i bleed the brakes shortest to longest .will try longest to shortest at the weekend ,thx for input

cp

Have you cheacked the flexibl

Have you cheacked the flexible link in the break line? If this has been stretched then the reinforcing webing inside it may have given way. If this has happened some of your effort on the break peddel will be going into inflating the hose, like a baloon. This can also happen due to age/fateag. It's worth checking all three flexi links. Get someone else to pres the peddel while you look at the link. You should see if it 'baloons'.

Any veiws expresed in this thread by me are purely from my own experience, and (sometimes) falible memory. Hope my comments help, but please don't take them as gospel.

poor brakes

turned out to be an air lock ,when i did the spring over axle conversion i removed the brake pipes and when i put them back on i put the pipe that went across the axle to bottom of the cyl instead of the top ,now it feeds into the bottom of the cyl out of the top into the bottom of the other side and out of the bleed value.thanks for your ideas

cp

Nice to know.

Thanks for letting us know its fixed.
Few here ever bother to say thanks!