82 Caddy strange drum brake goings on..

I'm almost stumped. Not quite, but almost. I'd like to preface this with saying I have an 81 wotj 640K miles on it, and this 400K 82 was mine eight or ten years ago and I recently got her back. I've done rear brake jobs on both of them more than once in the past, and I'm certainly not infallible but this ain't my first rodeo.

So, I put new brake cables, drums, shoes, hardware and wheel cylinder on the rear of the 82 Caddy. It had an e-brake that was out of adjustment room, and the adjusting wedge in the rear brakes was all the way down and the drums were obviously badly worn, though the shoes were not worn out.


My first problem is the hand brake has to be adjusted all the way down, the adjusting nuts, to tighten up well. Normally I adjust so they are tight at three clicks up, I can't get these tight at three clicks up at all.

My second problem is the brake pedal is low, the master cylinder is new and well bled with a pressure bleeder. I believe it is related to the parking brake adjusting strangeness.

I've measured the ID of the drums and they are 199.75mm or so. I've eyeballed the shoes, and a 2nd set I bought locally, and they are "pretty damn close" to each other, though I believe the 2nd set has a quarter or half MM more pad material.

The wheel cylinders are TRW's that I'm pretty sure I've used before, they all bled out fine.


What is going on here? Near as I can tell there is excessive clearance between the shoe linings and the drum. I've visually compared the cables online and they look to be right, as was the part number on the packaging but it's almost like they are too long, or there is excessive clearance between the shoes and drum. The auto-adjuster wedge dropped half way right off the bat, I manually snugged them up and it didn't help much. I don't believe it's the drums, I don't think it's the shoes but I'm not willing to say it 100%, I can't see how the wheel cylinders would do this as they extend quite far and sort of float on a spring between the cups, I guess the parking brake cables could be too long but they are Coife and correct far as I can tell, there just seems to be too much clearance between the drums and the shoes.. Not even counting the low pedal, the parking brake really ought to adjust snug with everything new at three clicks up or so, not adjusted full tight and handle pulled ALL the way up.
My next step is to measure the brake cables, though I found a range of listed lengths for the Caddy. Next is order some Febi shoes, I think what I have on there are Meyle. Next is replace the damn backing plate although I don't see any inappropriate wear, final step is a disk brake conversion.
The only other clue I can offer is a very low at rest/up position of the brake pedal, but I don't believe this is a hydraulic issue since they do in fact auto-adjust, and the parking brake cannot be adjusted satisfactorily.

Thoughts?