Bert, Chris and Paul, thank you for your advice, every little suggestion came in useful and I am happy to say the little beastie stops like a real car should. I was actually quite surprised how much difference 4 corners stopping as versus only the front 2 makes, we went out on a quiet stretch of road yesterday and did some panic stops with only the front drums operational (these have been adjusted and bled from the start but I was ignorant on the back adjustments), then we put it back up on the stands and checked cleaned adjusted everything as advised and hey presto the darned thing stops u beaut.

In all the time I have been playing with cars I had no idea about radius grinding the shoes to the drums (although we did not need it in this instance) so a quick call to Kent Brake and Clutch (where we bought the M/C) brought me up to speed on that.

Chris your instructions took all the guesswork out of the equation, u dont write workshop manuals do you?

Paul, what a gem of a suggestion, still wondering how many more years it would have taken me to work that out on my own, scary thought.

Thanks again - John

it's all been said already about adjusting the rear brakes, but my little habit is to use a 1/4
inch drive socket to turn the adjusters. Put the side that goes onto the rachet onto the adjuster, pick the appropriate size allen key ( i usually use a 6 mm allen key & socket) & the risk of rounding off the adjuster is significantly reduced. The name for a shifting spanner around here is the nut f@cker. As the rear brakes aren't self adjusting, finding they're rounded off isn't fun. Later Nissans like the B310's & Stanza's had the star shaped wheel style rear brakes. they're a real pain to assemble compared to the 1200's. & they are supposed to self adjust by a linkage from the handbrake cable, but they never did.

I learned long ago that when something is in question, like this, then it's always a good idea to bring your variables under control & Bert has it covered fairly well.
Pop the drums & have a look at the linings, if they are 'in service' items you can see how much of the surface has been in contact. If the contact is full length, then it's all good, move to the next step.
Check wheel cylinder operation. All good?

Then while the drum is off, ensure that the adjuster has full & free movement. In other words, ensure it will actually screw all the way in or out. If not, remove & fix.
Return adjustment to fully out position.
Disconnect handbrake at wheel cylinder.
Ensure that wheel cylinder slides along the slot in the backing plate. This is a single piston design & when the brake is applied, the piston pushes one shoe & the wheel cylinder is free to slide back & push on the other one, so make sure it's got freedom of movement.
Refit brake drum & wheel.
Adjust brake while moving wheel a little in both directions. This will help position the shoes correctly when the shoes finally touch the drum. Adjust carefully to ensure that all un-necessary slack is removed. Do both sides the same.

Loosen off handbrake adjuster & refit rod or cable then adjust handbrake. [ensure that the cable is free to move over the full range of movement]
Bleed brakes if necessary.

If everything is checked & found serviceable, then adjusted correctly, then it WILL work as advertised.
Road test in both forward & reverse & check adjustment again to pick up any settling into position that the brake shoes might still do.

Yep, that's what I have done several times in the past. It's a pain to do it all but my brakes always gave of their best & never gave me any grief once they had been properly serviced & adjusted.

John,B10 drum brakes can be a pain in the but at the best of times,as they are super critical on adjustment and lining to dum alignment.Have the linings been radius ground to the drums,if not this could be a cause.
You should also check the wheel cylinders are going in and out correctly,you can do this very gently with the drums off with some one watching the wheel cylinders,but be very carefull not to push too hard(use you hand on the pedal)or you will pop the seals out.
Also remember,drum brakes are designed to "pump up"due to the valving in the master cylinder.
Check these few things,if all is well with the rears,gently test drive it and report back
Cheers

hi ppl, stumbled on this site late last nite due to a rear brake (possibly) adjustment problem. thought I would add my problem here instead of starting a new thread.

A friend aquired a 1968 datto 1000 few days ago with no brake pressure whatsoever, a quick check and the master was replaced with a brand new JB1116 which is a single outlet job with one reservoir which goes to a distribution block on the firewall which then splits front left, front right and single rear(drums all round on this thing).

After bleeding the air (and the rubber bits from the original master) out and adjusting the front drums pedal still very sloppy, straight to floor first pump but only halfway down after that. Didnt know about the rear adjustment, which is what made me go looking and stumbled on this site and then this thread, so thinking there might be a further fault we blocked off the line to the rear brakes at the distribution block and re bled the front again and adjusted the shoe clearance to a slight drag on the drums.

At the moment we have front brakes operational only (car is on stands) we have no air in the lines to the best of our ability and now the master still goes halfway to the floor on the first push but hardly moves on the second and subsequent pumps, the drums lock tight from the first pump but I cant see why the first pump is lower than the others as we put another half litre of fluid thru the front lines and no more air came out and as I wrote above the shoes are adjusted as far as practicable.

At least we know how to adjust the back drums now but if we unblock the line even with the back shoes adjusted it is going to need more pedal travel as the master is going to be pushing fluid into 2 more slaves.

The other thing is that the master seems so tiny considering it has to push fluid into 6 slaves, I would welcome some feedback from someone who is still driving an original functioning setup.

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

Here in south africa, you can go to just about any brake shop and they are eiether going to tell you they have to be oversive, you drums are #####d or you must go buy new drums as the wreckers down here's drums, you will be damn lucky if you can salvage anything off the cars!!

we can buy brand new drums here, we still have 2007 model Nissan 1400's being made, but why spend so much money on brakes that arent really that great anyway!

Well when you buy shues you do usualy request it... Or if not its bad for the brake shop to assume they are oversize!

You are buying brakes from a brake shop i hope

Had the same problem a little while back with my brakes, wasnt that hard though,
i had a good looking over and found out that they no longer made the standard thickness brake shoes anymore unless you requisted it, the new one's all came 2mm thicker to compensate for the years and years of skimming the drums, check that out first?!?!?

It is a 1/4 square stud. Get it as tight as you can by hand. Back it off to the flat (you will feel it "snap" onto the flat part). Then ensure the wheel actually turns by hand.

If you do it this way, the brake pedal will be high and tight, just like a brand new car.

I got into the habbit of removing the rear brake adjuster from the backing plate when the shoes are off, then cleaning all the crud from the threads, dismantling it, cleaning all the parts properly, then refitting everything with either a high melting point grease, or with a suitable anti sieze on the threads.
If the square drive is damaged, then replace the adjusting screw with new or a good used one to avoid problems later.

This came about one day many years ago when I went to adjust the rear brakes to discover that one side was frozen & I rounded off the square drive of the adjustment screw.
Now my brakes are always easy to adjust.

If it's the first time that I have had the brakes off, then I usually replace the wheel cylinders with new also. They're too cheap to not do it & then I KNOW absolutely the condition of my brakes.