Rear brake question

[jazz-n-tj]

I just finished replacing my rear drum brakes. When I did this I replaced shoes, drums, all springs/hardware, and also my wheel brake cylinders. They feel better than they did before, which is good. Now my emergency brake actually holds me on hills whereas before it would not hold me no matter what adjustments I made with the star ratchet or tightening my e-brake cable under the tub.

With that said, while it was up on jack stands, I started it and put it into first gear and just let it idle and spin the tires. I then pushed my brakes hard and it was not able to stall out the wheels. In fact, it barely affected the wheel speed.

I had used one of those self bleeding pumps that you get at Harbor Freight and figured that I must not have been able to get all the air out of the line, so today I had my father help me bleed the brakes through pumping the brake pedals. After we got the remaining bubbles out of the system I tried the same procedure and the brakes were not able to stall the wheels nor affect the wheel speed much. But if I pull hard on the e-brake it will almost stall it.

With that said, I sure figured that the rear brakes should be able to stall the drive train when just idling with the wheels spinning in the air but maybe I am wrong. If it should be able to stall the drivetrain, then what do you think it might be? I do not notice any worse braking than prior to the job (and I think it is better, but that could just be the placebo effect). After driving around the block and braking 5-6 times I got under the Jeep and felt the drums and they were warm but not hot-but I had not braked really hard or at high speeds. I was only driving 15-25 mph in my neighborhood.

Thank you for the advise.

 

[Ct_tj]

Try the same test with all 4 wheels in the air and the jeep in 4 wheel drive. See what happens and let us know. Also how exactly did you bleed the brakes? Depending on the method you might have agitated the fluid enough that there's air trapped in the lines. There's someone on here that is extremely knowledgable on these brake systems so we might have to trash him on to this thread if we can't figure it out

 

[Goatman]

Sounds like you either reassembled the brakes wrong or you need to adjust them tighter. Get them to where you can just barely get them to a slight drag against the drum. That should do it. Put the tires back on to be sure everything is being held together where it should be.