Badly made i guess.. Going to chop 6mm off the edge of them all. Hopefully its an isolated incedent but worth keeping the the back of the mind for future reference..
Sooo.... Kept digging & found the problem. The new shoes are 6mm wider than the old ones so the unmachined part of the Drum catches on the shoe & pulls it on as soon as it goes backwards. Front shoe not a problem because as you know theres a...
You just push them in with the shoes fitted then put the drums on before you bleed them,no need for cable ties. It makes sure no air is trapped in the cylinder.
I had this, found it was one of the springs on the rear which was pulling the cylinder back in. Check springs :)
Mine was 3 & 8 on the pic above. rather than go to the stud on the back plate the spring went shoe to shoe
HTH
Have you got the springs attached as shown
manual recommneds using 3 clamps on the flexis to isolate both fronts and the rear when bleeding
with all clamps on the pedal should be hard
then try removing one of the front clamps and check again...
On our S2 I put a chamfer on the shoes to stop the brakes binding in reverse. I found the best way to drive ours was to press the brake pedal once and on the second press they would be perfect. This was after quite a bit of faffing around.
Also...
The lower spring should pull the trailing shoe into the cylinder enough to hold it in place. Maybe it's stretched/lost its spring?
The pedal shouldn't 'pump up'. Maybe it's related to the weak lower spring?
Sounds like the springs are in the correct places so thats a good starting point. At 3 notches each of the brakes are still binding slightly. Is it simply the nature of the beast? With it parked on a flat hard surface it can be pushed forwards...
Never come across this before, but theres a first time for everything!
1974 SER3 swb with some odd brake problems. Hopoefully someone has come across this before & can advise me.
Brakes were pretty much shot so replaced the lot. Cylinders, drums...