Mystery of the smoking nuts

CrankyMike said
The more I look at OP's picture the more it looks like the shoes are too big for the backing plate. Lining appears to be even with or above the outer edge of backing plate. The adjuster slot is also at the very top of the adjuster wheel, the front slot is above the top of the adjuster. Looks very "off" when compared to service manual illustration. Also didn't see any mention of year, make or model of the vehicle in question? Other than the deep groove in the drum were the original brakes working OK without getting hot or dragging?

64 valiant. Original brakes were “working” but sloppy with inconsistent presses, broke a front wheel cylinder on day 2 of ownership. I Replaced 2 others shortly after.
BRakes weren’t hot, but driver rear still had a rub that I originally guessed was a bad bearing. When I put the new shoes/drums/wheel cylinder/hardware on that’s when things when from bad to undriveable.

Shoes being too big too small/big for the drums was something I was wondering about but everything I saw was pretty consistent with sizes and what I needed. Maybe it’s a different backing plate than the original?

Been apart and put together so many times with different ideas. It’s going back to the brake shop at this point, hoping they can find something I’ve missed but my hopes are low considering they told me it was “all good, everything looks fine” when I first ran into the issue and now they’ve been too busy to get me back in the last couple weeks.