Non-Braking Rear Brakes...What's Broken?!

1997 Dodge Caravan SE - 105,000 miles.
The wear bar on the front brakes started it's tell-tale whine so I replaced the front pads. Rotors looked fine, so I left them alone. I pulled the rear wheels, still 80-90% pad left on the shoes so I left them alone as well.
The brake pedal felt pretty mushy after a short test drive and the front brakes smelled and felt hot...the rears felt cool to the touch.
I bled all four corners and it's still the same. Parking brake works fine and there's plenty of pad on the rears - yet they don't seem to be engaging hardly at all. After an extended normal driving test drive of a few miles the fronts are incredibly HOT...rears are cool to the touch.
I drove it really EASY to work this morning, using as little brake as possible (almost all downshifting w/the tranny)...they were cool so they're not dragging either.

Help!? Hi,
There is typically a "wear in" period for new pads but your case seems to be more extreme than that. The next thought would be that if you didn't have the rotors machined and check for frozen calipers and proper lube that this may be the cause of the front grab only. Machining the rotors properly would be my first thought
AND...other items to check out for the "spongy" pedal could be..
1) Deterioated rubber brake hoses 2) Master Cylinder mounting bolts not tight or faulty master cylinder. 3) Soft or swollen caliber seals. 4) Air in lines, (but you bled already).
Hopefully this will help some and naturally I would double check that you installed the correct pads, no insult intended. But sometimes the auto parts store will make a mistake.
Tom K Hi;

Your problem sounds like an uneven pressure front to rear situtation. This could be caused by a faulty master cylinder, also giving you the spongy feeling in the pedal. When a master cylinder goes bad, the pedal will usually drift slowly to the floor as pressure is applied to the pedal Car Repair Talk's forum.