I'm working on my mom's 2000 Taurus SE. Normally I post about my Buick LeSabre but I'm happy to get a chance to interact with some Ford enthusiasts for once!

Basically she had a recent (6 or 8 months ago) brake job at the dealer where they replaced rear shoes, drums & hardware as well as the front pads and rotors. Essentially she had a pretty comprehensive brake job, or so she thought. Unfortunately in the past couple of months she developed a severe shudder condition in the front end and steering system when applying brakes. I took the car out for a test drive and discovered that her parking brake was completely inoperative. Of course I immediately pulled the rear drums for inspection and discovered that the shoes were not contacting the drum at all when the pedal is applied. They appeared to be mildly worn but all the supposedly "new" hardware looks suspiciously ancient. I'm guessing they just threw some shoes on it and put the new drums on, but didn't bother replacing the hardware or adjusting anything. The adjuster screw was totally rusted and locked in its minimum setting.

I removed all the hardware on both the driver's side and passenger side, cleaned it thoroughly, and lubed all the joints with brake lube. I then reassembled everything after getting the adjuster screw freed up and lubed. Initially the system was perfect. I took the car for a test drive and I could immediately feel the rear brakes engaging and the front shudder condition was totally gone. I presume that the adjusters were not properly set by the dealer or the retractor springs were frozen. Whatever the case I suspect that she had virtually no rear brake action at all before I did this rebuild and adjustment work.

The problem is the other day my mom complained that her brakes were "scrunching" in the rear. Sure enough I took it out for a test drive and I can hear a crunching sound coming from the rear drums when I come to a slow stop. It's almost as if the shoes are skipping or vibrating when they make very gentle contact. So basically when you apply consistent braking to come to a gentle stop they're perfectly quiet until the last instant when the car finally settles to full stop, that's when you hear a loud crunch from the rear drums. I'm not sure how to adjust them or what the problem could be. I'm going to try setting the adjuster screws again until i can feel the shoes dragging very slightly. I had set the adjusters until I felt dragging then backed them off until I felt no dragging at all. I'm curious if anyone has any other suggestions. I feel like the front disc brakes are heavily engaged at a slow stop while the rear shoes are just making enough contact to vibrate and moan. I'm hoping that making them tighter will correct the problem. Since I lack experience with drum brakes I'm looking foward to hearing some other suggestions. I'd rather not have to throw out the shoes which are well above the minimum spec on the lining thickness.

In the time honored tradition of "venting" I'd like to say that I truly hate drum / disc distributed braking systems. I can't believe this car was built with a drum / disc system all the way through it's final incarnation in the late 00's. Shame on Ford for using such a mediocre brake design on an otherwise solid car.

I want to also mention that after doing the rebuild and adjustment work on the rear brakes the parking / emergency brake started working perfectly.

Did you happen to notice if the rear brake shoes were different lengths? Maybe the front and rear shoes were swapped, or both short shoes are on one side of the car and both longs on the other side. The short shoe should be towards the front of the car and the long shoe to the rear if they are two different sizes. None of my Fords (from 1993 to 2004 model years) have had rear drum brakes, so I'm not sure if they still used unequal length shoes into 2000.

Also, make sure the wheel cylinders are not leaking. Shoes contaminated with brake fluid can cause them to become grabby. There's not really a way to clean contaminated brake shoes other than to fix the source of the leak and replace the shoes.

-Rod

My '02 has rear drums and the shoe linings are unequal length.

Something else to consider - if you don't have ABS, the Taurus uses an adjustable proportioning valve for the rear brakes. An arm is attached to the valve that moves with suspension travel.

Lightly loaded=very little rear brakes
sagging rear end=heavy rear brake application

If the arm and bracketry are anything like mine (worn out) you can get inconsistent rear brake application.

I ultimately got the problem corrected.

Thanks for the suggestions:

The rear shoes are slightly different lengths but they can only be installed correctly becuase the rear most shoe has a different configuration for the parking brake linkage. I can't really see how it would be possible to install the shoes incorrectly on this car.

The car does have four wheel ABS so there is no proportioning linkage to become worn or unresponsive.

I'm certain that the wheel cylinders are completely tight. There is no brake fluid on any of the components. Everything is totally dry.

What I had to do was to take the car out and burnish the drums by jamming the parking brake down and accelerating at the same time. I did that about four times and then rode the brakes gently for a while after that. Once they were nice and hot I cycled through some smoothe consistent braking maneuvers, coming to a full stop each time.

I then brought the car back home, and let it completely cool off. Once the brakes had settled to room temperature I jacked up the car and backed the adjuster screws off on both sides until there was absolutely no drag at all on either wheel. I then took the car back out and gave the brakes another solid workout.

So far so good, they're completely quiet and working properly.