pulled drums off, peeled dust covers back, fluid started pouring out of the wheel cylinders.

Carefully pushed the pedal down (I know the cups will pop out)....nothing. Check other side, nothing.

So I'm getting no hydraulic pressure to the back, and both wheel cylinders are leaking.

Where do I start first?

Truck stops on a dime, can lock the fronts up easy.

 

Well they both leak so replace the cylinders first pull both sides off and see at that time if you can get fluid to pump out the lines.

You may as well just replace all the guts of the rear brakes check your backing plate for very deep grooves in the backing plates on my Dak I had some good grooves worn in that I had to file down as flat as possible.

You may have a bad master or ABS

Replace your flex line also if you have time and $$

I would also say anyone with a 2-nd gen Dakota needs to replace the rear brake cylinders if never done. They have a tendency to be frozen or leak at only $15 each it’s worth it to be sure you have good rear brakes.

Usually you never know that your rear brakes are useless garbage till you inspect them

 

We just went out and played with them. did a crack/bleed at the ABS solenoid and another at the rear, both had good fluid flow. but very little actuation force. Both cylinders are definitely leaking, but dad put 3-4 turns into the driver side adjuster and one into the pass side to tighten things up. We wont have time to do a good servicing till after this weekend (dad works thru sunday)

The cylinders are 8.99/side @ oreilly.

I wish I could go steal the complete 11" setup off a QC at the junkyard, but my budget is a touch thin right now.

 

Yea I know what you mean I was thinking about trying that swap also the 9'' brakes are ok at best and a poor design as far as I’m concerned

I would need to change the master also to match the different size rear brakes

 

I decided I wanted some quality cylinders to replace my old garbage ones with so I looked at all the ones at the local parts shops and asked if we could pull the cylinders out and apart to inspect them I mean we completely pulled them apart and I was shocked at most as they were rebuilt never new and most had a vast difference in springs and used pistons and even different seals inside them it was a real hodgepodge of garbage out on the market. I finally decided to get what I thought were new WAGNER cylinders from rockauto but at receiving them and pulling them apart noticed they were rebuilt units also but they did have all the same springs and very clean pistons and seals inside them so I was happy and installed them.

I will say one thing as you receive them pull them apart inspect them and take note clean them with brake cleaner then lube them with fresh DOT 3 then install them why inside they are coated with cosmoline or something like it.

What is cosmoline a LINK

The things I saw inside them were banged up pistons different material pistons some had what looked like Teflon on them some didn’t have the Teflon and this is on the same cylinder they could be different. The springs could and were very different in each cylinder; the seals could and were very different even on the same cylinder even very different bleeder sizes on each cylinder. I’m talking these differences were on the same brand in the same store even the sales guy was shocked by what we saw inside these cylinders and how different they could be he was like wow that’s not good.

The cylinders are very simple

 

I found this interesting

DRILLED VS SLOTTED ROTORS

For many years most racing rotors were drilled. There were two reasons - the holes gave the "fireband" boundary layer of gasses and particulate matter someplace to go and the edges of the holes gave the pad a better "bite".

Unfortunately the drilled holes also reduced the thermal capacity of the discs and served as very effective "stress raisers" significantly decreasing disc life. Improvements in friction materials have pretty much made the drilled rotor a thing of the past in racing. Most racing rotors currently feature a series of tangential slots or channels that serve the same purpose without the attendant disadvantages.