How sturdy is Maule nose gear?

[jhalcomb]

Looking to buy MT 7 but am concerned about durability of nose gear. I don't see any reports here of busted struts or bent firewalls like I do for the Cessna 182s. Any known issues? Does the MT7 235 land nose heavy with the bigger engine. Is there an option for a bigger nose wheel? Thanks!!

[VA Maule]

Stoutest nose gear that I know of bolted into the engine mount. As far as landing loads on it good policy is always hold nose wheel off as long as possible and land as slow as possible.

[Mountain Doctor]

My Trigear and I have been to some very rough places, no problems other than stone damage to the fabric on the bottom of the plane.

Rough field landings are full flaps, hold the nose off as long as possible. I also touch down with a little power.

You can put a 7" nosegear tire but may have to invert the fork mounting bolts. I have not done this yet.

Also a piece or hose wrapped around the strut gives extra protection.

Always do runups with nosegear straight.

[iceman]

if you look at the maule nose gear and compare it to the Piper tripacer nose gear you will see it is identical... as to where it attaches i have no clue but i suspect Maule was real careful in that area... as to the tripacers nose gear i once saw an old sales video of a tripacer taking off across a plowed field with no problem... don't think i would worry about the Maule nose gear....

[Craigh-KRPH]

Just saw this post. If the Maule nose gear is anything like the TriPacer nose gear it is pretty stout. My old TriPacer had 8.5 mains and 6.0 on the nose with the strut pumped up. I landed on some fairly rough fields, as well as an off-airport landing on a rough lake shore when an engine quit on me.