If you apply brakes on a drum type brakes with out the drum on the wheel cylinder should come a part amd make a mess. You either have a massive leak or a failing master cylinder.

How did you bleed the rear brakes? Do the back lines or front lines get any pressure? Put your drums on and try pumping real fast and real hard. Does it build at all?

 

Yes it builds pressure when you pump them but when you turn the car on it looses that pressure. I think it may be from air on the ABS system. I am going to try to bleed it tomorrow. When the car was off and I pressed the brakes with the drums off neither of the back shoes expanded. Is this normal?

 

No it is not normal. The wheel cylinder is just to floating pistons, Any pressure, I mean ANY pressure and the brake shoes should start to move.

It is a very simple system. The line feed brake fluid into a round bore both ends of the bore have pistons and seals in them. That why if you have pressure then the shoes should move. Unless the shoes are frozen to the back plate or the pistons themself are frozen. That would be very rare.

Youtube is your friend

 

how and when did this start?

 

See post # 5

 

there is a safety/proportion valve that will shut off the fluid to either front or back if it senses a loss of fluid. if there was a loss of fluid to the rear or if bleeding the system was done say aggressively at the rear it would set a brake light and cut off fluid to the rear. to reset the brake light and proportion valve press the brake peddle very hard. in your case i would say do it when key is off and see if it resets. may take more than once. could be an air lock in the master cylinder i just dont see how it would sorta work when not running, check to see if the front brakes are engaging when you press brakes when not running.

 

The old saftey valves would shut off front to back but a modern one should do left front/right rear or right front/left rear. I admitt I never verified that on the 4th gens. We where told way back when all cars had to be that way. Rear brakes on a short FWD car are almost usless.

The safety switch should reset itself once the the leak is fix. Sometime they need a little help which why I said to pump it. I have had a few system the switch had to be forced that those system had a LOT of rust in them.

 

Well I bled and bled and bled the drum brakes and they were full of air and after the 7th time, I am happy to report I now have brakes and I am a happy Camaro driver . Thank you all for your help . Now, what I did, I bought one of these at autozone:

OEM/One man brake bleeder kit (25036) | Brake Bleeder | AutoZone.com

Best $10 I ever spent . You put the tube onto the nipple and then unscrew it and you can pump and pump and pump without having to loosen, compress, tighten, and depress 50 times with this thing all you have to do is hook it up, loosen the screw, then pump until either all the air is out or the bottle is full then you just unscrew the cap, dump it in the master cylinder, then screw the cap back on and your back in business . I will make a note though, that there was air trapped in the ABS system. Here's what I did:
Before bleeding, unplug all 3 connectors from the ABS system (2 silver cylinder and the box beside those cylinders in front of the master cylinder, drivers side) and turn the key to ACC position, you should hear a click, this is the valves opening up in the ABS. This happens because with no power the ABS shuts off so all you have is normal brakes and you can then clean ALL the air from your brake system. And when your done all you do is plug them in and turn the key and the valves will close back up. The n your good to go . I thank you all and wish everyone else the best of luck if you have similar issues to the one I was having.
~Tater

 

TIG strolls away whistling to himself (see post # 3)

anyway, check out the garage section where we're making suggestions of $100 worth of tools which are nice to have beyond the basic hand tools. It's for those getting started.

I have the one person, low cost bleeder on the list. It makes things much easier

please add your suggestions as there is no right or wrong unless you suggest a Ford poster for the wall

 

Yeah sure tigger, but you only suggested a leak in post 3.
Take a looky see at post 6, where it was suggested by one of our highly respected members that it very well could be air still trapped in the system, in addition to a possible aforementioned leak.
whistle...whistle...whistle.
Oh and darth, one word: "speed bleeders", look em up!