I had a hard pedal on my manual drums. One problem was that my return spring on the pedal was weak, so when I had adjusted my brake light switch I had adjusted it out to far and was actually putting slight pressure to the brakes constantly. Also had a rear brake cylinder that was hung up. Fixed the break cylinder and backed off the brake switch and no more hard pedal. Trying to find the will power to take out brake pedal assembly to replace the spring, but for now just pulling back on the pedal gently with my foot so the break lights go off.