Well I took the drums off again tonight to see if anything was obvious. I read some car forums about installing the brake shoes backwards - SHORT PAD TO THE FRONT. Well mine were backwards... Have no idea when or how I did that but its corrected now.

Problem 2 is the drivers side parking brake cable hangs up. Discovered this when I went to reassemble brakes and the shoes wouldn't physically touch the pivot point up top because that bar with the square spring was fully seated...I only had wd 40 with me and it helped but the spring doesn't have enough oomph to pull its I assume rusted self thru the liner. I can lightly help it back thru just fine.

This caused every time I used the parking brake to push the top of the shoes outward but would leave them out so when I went to brake the shoe was not pushing against the pivot point up top thus the wheel cyl has to move in open air for a few millimeters before it even touches the shoe thus random low pedal till I assume it could vibrate enough to retract the cable.

So as a test I left lots of slack in the cable rod (center point) forced the cable back in the drum so it was maximum slack inside, put drums on and manually cranked adjusters till I felt drag, wiggled drum off and on and repeated till the drum was snug, then turned it back in a few clicks till I felt no/little drag. Then did the whole forward reverse stab brakes thing and wowza! Very nice pedal that goes down maybe 3 inches and stops the car on a dime! For S&G I tried the parking brake and while it still held afterwards I had a goofy pedal again.

SO my next course of action is to I assume replace said cables correct? Or is it possible to undo the clip where they both meet and pull them most of the way out of the liner and clean and lube them? Replace or clean? Pass side is smooth as butter but would slide both back out and spray with carb/brake cleaner then lube with a special mix of high tack grease and graphite (pretty much hoist cable grease)

So glad I think I finally got the kinks worked out...