rear brake drum adjustment clearence drag ? problem ? 74 valiant

Looks ok to me, and like I said if it's obvious that say only the tips of the shoes are touching the drum you can sand those high spots down some if you are careful to do it flat and a little at a time.

One of the things I do is to sand the drum with a rough paper in a cross hatch pattern so when you apply the brakes it tends to take some of the high spots of the shoes off pretty fast.
Then the drum smooth's down pretty quick from the shoe wearing on it and everything is peachy because the shoe more closely fits the drum and this can solve uneven braking (pulling)
It works kind of like the old arching machines used to do by sanding the shoe arch to fit the drum.

I have to run up town, but if you can post a good pic of a shoe surface I can show you what high spots look like.
Basically it's where the drum only contacts part of the shoe instead of the whole surface (usually the ends)

On the blue comment, overheated drums turn blue from the heat, and sometimes get what are called hot spots.
These are spots of blue or even black in the friction surface for the shoes, and because of the heat the spots are now "tempered" steel and cannot be taken out even by a brake lathe. (too hard)
In these cases the drums are trash.

Yours show no signs of overheating so they would eventually wear in where the shoe contacts the entire surface, but it takes a long time.
That process can be speeded up by the sanding of the shoes and/or drums.


ok cool , try these. when you say rough paper for the drum , how rough ? 80 grit ? , 120 ?

shoe 1.JPG

shoe 2.JPG