I'll save you all the long, gory details: the rear brakes kept hanging up on my '62 Suburban. The shoes would come out too far, and couldn't retract because they fell off their mounts or they fell off the little slider pads on the backing plate.
I bought a set of new drums from my local Car Quest.
With my fancy-shmancy drum caliper, this is what I found: factory spec is 11.00 inches, plus a .030-inch cut. Shop manual says that if you go to .060-inch, you'll need to get special oversized shoes.
I was at .287-inch. For those of us that are fractionally inclined, that's 1/32 and just under 2/32 respectively. I was at a tick over 7/32. YIKES.
I've got dual a dual reservoir, power booster conversion, and added self-adjust mechanisms. The rear drums hanging is from two things. The new drums should fix one, and a heat shield to protect the brake lines from the exhaust manifold will solve the other.
-Brad
