I can relate to what you are saying about how horrible the Azusa brakes are! What I did to make them work was to activate them with a foot pedal so that you can apply enough force to the shoes so that they work. I currently have them on my two stroke minibike and it stops vey well. I can lock up the rear tire if need be with ease.
I order to get the travel that I needed I cut the arm down and drilled the hole where it is on the arm and it works perfectly. There is more than enough leverage from the length of the foot pedal that I can stop the minibike with very little effort. If you locate the rod end where the original hole was located there was too much travel needed to apply the rear brake. I tried sanding the shoes, roughing up the brake drum, truing up the drum on my lathe etc. This has worked for me and it is still working great!
Lol, no problem brother!
