So my nephews gf picked up a 2000 neon @ an auction this past weekend, brought it by asked me to check it out 54k on the clock I guess it was parked/hidden in a storage for 10 years to hide from the repo man, still has the cosmoline wax smell on the outside from the factory I guess never was fully hotwashed..

anyways long story short, rear brakes never been touched but they get warm after braking normally, when pulling on the ebrake @ 5-10-20 mph almost nothing slows the car down as if they were soaked with brake fluid. Pulled the drums, every thing seems to be working normally had her press on the brakes so I could see the shoes move... I washed them down good with brake cleaner, re assembled took a test drive pulled ebrake, seems to have helped but not much. Air in the rear lines 7 proportioning valve is ruled out since the ebrake is how I usually diagnose drum brakes, any idea's? I'll prob just put new shoes & turn the drums this weekend. But my neon I can lock up the tires with my ebrake I've not ever had this sorta problem.

 

Are they adjusted properly? The shoes might be moving, but that doesn't mean they are applying all of the pressure that they should.

 

They more then mine do, ran out of time this weekend going to put new rear brake cylinders in thinking the old ones are weak even though there's not one drip, turn the drums for a final pass to see if that clears it up. I matched it with mine an its all there & the same I had to 2nd guess myself to be sure. I bled the lines with a full quart hooked up to my power bleeder just to see if anything came out... clean as can be not even any soot/debris. Stumped pretty good.... only thing I can think of is faulty material used from India on the shoes. Next weekend new shoes, cylinders & a fresh pass on the drums I hope clears it up he goes to school soon lol

 

new shoes, new drums, new brake parts kit, new wheel cylinders..... rear brakes now lock up with e-brake so the problems fixed

 

so 6 months later those rear drums have gone back to being super weak as the e-brake wont even skid the tires lol Can't believe dodge put such weak $hyit on. Unless my other guess is the proportioning valve might be off an sending only 10% to the rear drum cylinders? Any brake pros on here?

I'll do another full quart bleed for them tomorrow and see what comes of it

 

The Neon has an automatic adjuster on the emergency brake. I was told that before you manually adjust the rear shoes you need to reset the automatic adjuster, then manually adjust the rear brakes up until they begin to drag then back them off a couple clicks. I've attached a copy of the instructions on resetting the automatic adjuster.