I realize that this is sort of a hijack, but shouldn't you test brake bias in the dry? The way I see it, the more traction you have, the more you are able to unweight the rears, at which point the bias comes into play. It would follow (assuming that I'm not out in left field so far) that as it got wet or icy the bias would move towards the fronts, I think this is why vw moved to the dynamic proportioning valve. Actually pretty neat how those work inside.
As best I could tell, the dynamic one I took off when I replaced the drums with disks did not have check valves in it, only the prop mechanism. I thought all drum setups had check valves, but this did not seem to. Maybe the self adjusters keep things tight enough that the checks are unneccesary? Given the number of people who say that they run without them, I'm surprised that you say your rears are not working.