A number of things to consider.
1. Did you fit new brake shoes? If so did you have the shoes radius ground to suit the drums? Have you fitted the shoes correctly? They have to go in a certain way to ensure that all 4 front shoes are leading and 2 rear shoes are leading and 2 are trailing. If you don't have 2 trailing shoes at the rear then not much braking in reverse. If they haven't been radius ground then they won't match the drums and until they wear/bed in you won't have full shoe and drum contact and you will have excessive pedal travel.
2. When bleeding the rear brakes do NOT press the brake pedal down quickly. If you do you will cause the rear pressure limiting valve to operate and no fluid and air will be pushed out the rear bleed nipples.
3. I'm no expert on front twin leading shoe drum brakes but often air is trapped in the connecting pipe between the 2 wheel cylinders and it can be a PIA to get it out. DRMINI suggests that you loosen off the interconnecting pipe at the wheel cylinder that doesn't have the brake hose connected to it and pump the pedal and you will quite often get air out that was trapped in the interconnecting pipe. Another poster on the Minimania board takes the shoes off and puts clamps on the the wheel cylinders to keep the pistons from moving when he bleeds the brakes.
4. Make sure the brake master cylinder is fitted with a residual pressure valve. This is a plastic valve thingy that goes in the bottom of the master cylinder before you fit the big spring, piston etc. If you don't have this in place you can get air into the system via the wheel cylinders. The valve maintains a slight pressure in the system when the brakes are off to ensure the wheel cylinder seals are always expanded.
(Despite what others may say you also need them on cars fitted with front discs and rear drums and a single master cylinder)
5. Did you fit new shoe return springs? If they are weak the shoes may not retract properly.
6. Is the handbrake working and adjusted properly? Make sure the pivots on the trailing arms are not seized- pretty common, and that the cables move freely through the bend on the rear subframe front inner corners.
7. Adjust the shoes so that they are hard against the drums. You shouldn't be able to move the drums at all. Then back off the adjuster until the drum can be just moved by hand. Check for oval drums by seeing if the resistance to hand turning varies. All drums have a slight amount of ovality but the resistance should be fairly constant. Finally adjust so that you have slight rubbing contact all the time. As the brakes warm up the drum will expand and the rubbing will disappear and eventually the shoes will wear to match the drums.
8. Bleed the brakes in the following order so that the wheel cylinder furthest away from the master cylinder is bled first. LR, RR, LF, RF. If you don't do this then air can remain trapped in the system
If you have excessive brake pedal travel but the pedal is not spongy you have an adjustment problem of one form or another. The excess travel is caused by the brake shoes having to travel too far before they contact the drum.
If the pedal is spongy you have air in the system somewhere.
You shouldn't have much more than 1" to 2" of pedal travel before the brakes are fully applied.
The usual disclaimers apply. If in doubt take it to a brake place.
Regards
RonR
