CJ sat for 5 years - HELP

[350CJ5]

Who wants to help ? I bought a 1978 CJ5 last fall that had been stored for 5 to 6 years. Now that the weather is getting nice in Wisconsin, I am driving it more often. I noticed that I didn't have much stopping power and blamed it on the 33" swampers. That was until one day, I was messing around in 4 lo with the hubs unlocked and noticed the no matter how hard I stepped on the brakes the rear tires still spun . AT AN IDLE !! I have very little rear brakes. I have put on new shoes (11") and have them adjusted with a slight drag and also put on new front calipers and pads. I also have checked for crushed lines and didn't find any. Could it be the rear rubber brake hose or the master cyl ?
PLEASE GIVE ME ANY SUGGESTIONS. :(

Dave

[Yucca-man]

I suspect the rear rubber line. As it gets older, it will swell, reducing the pressure that actually goes to the rear brakes. If there was ANY water in the brake fluid (and I bet there was) it will have settled in the brake line and wheel cylinders, which would probably cause some problems as well.

Then again, you could just let me take it off your hands... :P

[350CJ5]

Thanks-I am going to get a new rear hose and bleed the hell out of the rear brakes-the cool thing about this cj5 is that it has 21 k original miles and has a built chev 350 and a thm350 trans-odometer shows 21 k and I had to remove the phillips screws from the rear drums. (remember those screws?)

[Yucca-man]

21k original? Dang.... Then again, my 73 only had 43k on it. Of course with a 5-digit odometer, it could have been 143k, or 843k and I wouldn't know 8)