Peerless MST-206 - will it survive mild use with 23" tires ?

My brakes failed to stop me and I had a sort of bad accident. Luckily no broken bones, but, it required a visit to the urgent care to be checked out (I waited 7 days) and I am on pain medicine at the moment.

If I had hit my head instead of my shoulder, my wife would be much richer $.

I need to test some better brakes out on the MST-206 using golf cart drums. I want to use 12" rims I already have (23x10-12 R1 chevron tires) on a non-running mower. I want to make sure my setup works BEFORE I order new 12" rims and 20x10-12 mud tires.

Will a Peerless MST-206 survive mild use with 23" tires, open diff, 17 HP, Murray wide body? I am using 4 on 4 hubs on the 3/4" axle.

I thought I could use gokart disc brakes, but, they do not fit inside the 8" rim, I need another .5".

I mostly keep to fairly even dirt and mud, but, I do tow a trailer that weighs between 250-400#s. The heavy loaded trailer with green oak firewood caused the brakes not to do squat going downhill.

I do not want to break a good 206. I have a club cart drum coming to test fit everything before I order back plates.

My mst206 has made 2 trips to haspin and a trip to badlands and has been thoroughly abused and I run the hell out of it I jump the rig and beat the snot out of it and I run 25 inch rears. i have towed fully loaded scrap trailers and bent the hitch on my tractors frame

It might hold up unlocked. They usually fare better unlocked as they’re more likely to spin a tire before they actually get any torque to them.

Personally I would not run any bigger than a 22” on an MST.

First off, I'm glad the accident was not worse. I agree with @RichieRichOverdrive.   My tractor Bowser runs 22's and it has been everywhere and wrecked several times.  Still working well.  I also do not have good brakes on it and need to look into something new.

Thanks everyone!

If this works out, I will post the pictures and details. Eventually I want to have a MST-205 locked running on 20x10-12 in this wide body. I just can't afford to have this Murray down as the other one with the Kohler is down because the engine is not running correctly and I can't figure it out, yet.

Yes, I am glad it was not worse. I know there has been talk about roll cages, safety, etc. In the FWIW category, if I only had a ROPS rear bar, and had been seat belted in, it would have been MUCH worse. Part of what saved me is I was thrown clear and forward, when turning, if I had stayed on the seat when it rolled, I would have likely hit my head on a firewood cage (330 gallon tote).

I am going to try making this system so it requires a minimum of welding, so, others can copy it. My target is <$300 total.

JB_4x4 wrote:

My brakes failed to stop me and I had a sort of bad accident.  Luckily no broken bones, but, it required a visit to the urgent care to be checked out (I waited 7 days) and I am on pain medicine at the moment.

If I had hit my head instead of my shoulder, my wife would be much richer $.

I need to test some better brakes out on the MST-206 using golf cart drums.  I want to use 12" rims I already have (23x10-12 R1 chevron tires) on a non-running mower.  I want to make sure my setup works BEFORE I order new 12" rims and 20x10-12 mud tires.

Will a Peerless MST-206 survive mild use with 23" tires, open diff, 17 HP, Murray wide body?   I am using 4 on 4 hubs on the 3/4" axle.  

I thought I could use gokart disc brakes, but, they do not fit inside the 8" rim, I need another .5".

I mostly keep to fairly even dirt and mud, but, I do tow a trailer that weighs between 250-400#s.  The heavy loaded trailer with green oak firewood caused  the brakes not to do squat going downhill.

I do not want to break a good 206. I have a club cart drum coming to test fit everything before I order back plates.

Main failure points on those from what i've seen is the casing snapping in half, that can obviously be avoided by not putting a foot of spacer on.
Back when I built my first mower I blew my 206 pretty damn quick because I took the pulley off with a pickle fork which completely ruined the c clip on the bottom of the input shaft.
Lesson learned, always pull the trans to get the pulley off, so long as you aren't stupid and as other guys said don't lock them they seem to hold up pretty decent, I had one that was shoehorned into an old roper by somebody else with 23"s on it and it seemed to be fine.

Normally I would say just send it and learn from experience but if I remember correctly you are they guy from Israel and I supposed those trannys would be a little harder to get out there.

Would really love to see how you set up those drum brakes, I don't have any brakes on my sears and I'm kinda scared to drive it much because I've had a few close calls on the roads where I almost blew a stop sign through a county highway...

> I remember correctly you are they guy from Israel

No, Atlanta GA, USA. I just updated my profile, still learning my way around. Complete mowers are cheap here, especially at auction.

> Would really love to see how you set up those drum brakes

Yes, I am going to post it here because I would like to prevent others from getting hurt like I did. Everything I am doing as regards to the firewood setup is so my wife can easily do it if I am not there to help. So, I rather get hurt from an oversight then her getting hurt doing something, that I should have foreseen.

Same with the go-kart to build I bought so my neighbor's kids could blast around. It will be well tested and driven some miles before I put them behind the wheel with helmets.

The safest way to go with braking is with a locked diff, and a disc or band brake setup on the stock location for max mechanical advantage. If you have never earnestly “dumped the clutch”, a MST might hold up with 23s. If you wanted to be extra careful, you could do a doc locker 2.0 and rely on the axle key in the center to hopefully shear before you break anything. I seem to recall @sadeoo7 shearing a few axle keys on 3/4 axle transaxles without hurting the rest of the trans.

@Budget_gokart seems to recognize the hazards of open diff braking, he ducked out on one trail ride at Haspin because of a gnarly hill we had to go down. He would have gotten busted up pretty bad if one tire started spinning backwards coming down the hill, and I respect him for knowing his limits.